


staring at the sink of blood and crushed veneer

by RaiLockhart



Category: Teen Wolf (TV)
Genre: Derek Hale & Lydia Martin Friendship, F/M, Gen, Kidnapped Lydia, Lydia Martin & Scott McCall Friendship, Multi, Pack Dynamics, Scott McCall is a Good Alpha, There is going to be Celtic mythology and I am so excited because I KNOW SO MUCH
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2014-08-24
Updated: 2014-12-24
Packaged: 2018-02-14 13:25:42
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 10
Words: 79,213
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/2193450
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/RaiLockhart/pseuds/RaiLockhart
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>How many times, she wondered briefly, can you find yourself missing before everyone stops looking?</p><p>Lydia has been kidnapped. She can only hope that they - her friends, her pack, the people that she's afraid won't even miss her - find her before it's too late.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. just last the year

_How many times_ , she wondered briefly, _can you find yourself missing before everyone stops looking_?

Lydia blinked a few times, her eyes trying desperately to adjust to the darkness. A small source of light filtered in from above, barely large enough to be a crack in the wall. It did nothing to illuminate her surroundings, and no amount of blinking, she surmised, was going to help her any more than that light.

She lifted her hands cautiously, stopping quickly when she heard a rustle of metal behind her. Her body went still, and she immediately assumed two possibilities: One, something was chained up behind her and heard her move. When nothing jumped or attacked, she lifted her arms again to confirm her second guess. Lydia herself was chained to something behind her, and the metal cuffs weighed heavy on her wrists as she tested how far in each direction she could go. The metal slithered nosily behind her, heavily clanging when she reached her limit.

She couldn’t stand. She could barely get her hands above her shoulders. And whenever the chains moved around her, dirt was kicked into the air.

“Hello? Hello, is anyone out there?” she yelled, her voice echoing dangerously loud in the confined space. “Help! Hey, help me!” she screamed. Nothing happened. She strained her eyes and listened for any noise, any confirmation that someone heard her.

 _Great_. She was chained up in some dirt room, her only source of light the small cracks around a cellar door where it didn’t fit so smoothly into its molding. The longer she was down there, the more defined the small rim of light from the door was; at least she knew there was a way out, even if she couldn’t get to it. She presumed there must be a staircase leading from there to where she currently sat. At least, she hoped so.

She tried to keep the bile from rising up in her stomach, and tried to keep herself from freaking out. Who knows how long she would be down here; she knew she needed to conserve her energy, and keep whatever remained of previously consumed meals (even partially digested) down.

It seemed to be a cruel joke to wake up on a Monday morning (or at least she thought it was Monday; she can’t have been gone for that long. Someone would have noticed. Someone _should_ have noticed) and be lost. It had happened before, of course, but today marked the first time that Lydia Martin woke up in the dark, chained away in someone’s cellar.

At least this time, she hadn’t done it to herself. It wasn’t a fugue state that left her miles away from home and trapped somewhere unfamiliar. Lydia closed her eyes and took a deep breath, forcing herself to move past her panic and her nausea. She focused on the constant whisperings that never quite left her, the small buzzing in her ears that she considered more of a steady companion than most of her friends at this point.

She willed the voices to be louder, feeling a mix of pride and fright when they listened.

The buzzing intensified, and syllables formed. Tears dripped down her cheeks as she listened to them.

It was like a choir, hauntingly chanting one name over and over again. _Lydia, Lydia, Lydia._

_LydiaLydiaLydia…_

Her lips quivered, and she screamed. It felt like it went on forever, like the scream predicting her own death would never end.

And once she finished, Lydia was aware of only one thing. For the first time since Peter attacked her, she was engulfed not by darkness but by something much more frightening.

Silence.


	2. pour a little salt

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Alright, so the Teen Wolf timeline is a bunch of shit, as we all know. For my purposes, this is it:  
> Scott, Stiles, Kira, Lydia, and Malia are seniors. Liam and Mason are freshmen. Danny graduated the year before. Allison and Aiden haven't been dead for too long, only about 6 months. 
> 
> It's around the end of September. And it's 2014 because I really wanted to make a reference to that song, and I'm 99% sure the TW writers have forgotten what year it is in their show, so... Yeah.

“Alright man, but just listen. When the rapper says, ‘She’s a beast,’ I think he is saying that she is an actual beast.”

Scott sighed, feeling a very strong desire to both bang his head against his locker and bang Stiles’ head against his locker. “Katy Perry is not a werewolf. Dude, come on.”

“I really don’t think you’re giving this the appropriate amount of thought,” Stiles said. Scott vehemently disagreed; he had given Stiles’ ridiculous theory enough thought already, probably too much thought. Stiles called him last night to talk about it, and when Scott hung up on him, he thought it was over. But, per usual, his best friend just could not let it go. “Malia, you agree with me, right?”

Malia, who was leaning on a locker on the other side of Stiles, opened her eyes. They had been in school for over a month, almost verging on two, and Scott had never seen anyone look so exhausted. He knew it was hard on her, trying to play catch up to all of them; hell, it was hard enough for him to keep up with all of his classes, and he didn’t have eight years of school missing. He wished they had been able to figure out how to home school her without raising suspicion, but her father – Mr. Tate – wanted her to live a normal life. He didn’t understand the circumstances and just wanted things to be as normal as they could be. Scott sympathized with his desire, but man, he hated seeing his friend struggle. “If I agree with you, does that mean we can stop listening to that song?”

“Yeah, of cour-" Stiles’ enthusiasm immediately wavered, an almost shocked look crossing his face. “Wait, are you trying to tell me that you don’t like that song?”

“Yes. I thought you understood me when I told you, ‘Stiles, I hate this song,’ two days ago.” She pushed herself off of the locker and crossed her arms over her chest. “Sometimes I wonder which one of us can’t pick up on intentions.”

Stiles snorted and started talking faster, his hand motions getting bigger every minute. Malia just rolled her eyes, and Scott saw the same dilemma of ‘my head or his on the locker’ running through her head. Maybe it was a ‘were’ thing to want to bash someone’s head in, but he figured that it was probably a Stiles thing. It was just the effect he had on everyone else.

It was a strange to be watching something so carefree, he thought. It felt like, ever since he had been bitten, ever since he had turned, nothing would ever be normal again. They had been through hunters, assassins, and demons, alphas and more alphas. But for the first time in a very long time, everything seemed to be as close to normal as it would ever get. He wanted, more than anything, for this to be how it was for their rest of their lives. No worrying about supernatural threats, no skipping class and hunting down killers.

He hated himself for wondering how long it would last.

“Are you guys ready to head to class? Or are we just going to stand in the hallway all morning?” Scott turned around and grinned. Kira stood behind them with a smile on her face, nearly beaming as she looked up at him. One of the best things about peace, about not feeling like you’re going to be shot in the back at any given moment, is the time it gives you to focus on the things – and the people – you really enjoy. Scott stooped slightly and kissed Kira, savoring in the rush of hormones and the warmth spreading throughout his body.

He could hear Stiles continue to explain his Katy-wolf theory to Malia, and he could smell the annoyance rolling off of her. But he didn’t care, not right now. “Good morning to you,” he said, his voice light. “Did you have a good night last night?”

“Well,” she said mischievously, “I happened to get some really killer pizza from the only arcade in town with this guy I know. He wasn’t so great, but the pizza was so worth it.” He loved the way her eyes twinkled when she was joking with him. He had a sudden urge to kiss her again.

“Are you guys seriously rehashing your date last night and pretending like we won’t notice? Because we did. It’s not cute,” Stiles informed them. Scott was suddenly very aware of his best friend standing behind him; he guessed that Malia had finally told Stiles to shut up or she would make him shut up.

He shifted his body so he faced the pack as a whole all at once, and slid an arm around Kira’s shoulders. “How about we get to class?”

They all started walking, relishing in the mundane day at the continuously tortured Beacon Hills High School. Scott heard Malia ask about the point of _The Great Gatsby_ (“Why didn’t Nick just kill them? I don’t understand, none of them provided any survival benefits and they were so annoying…”) and tuned out Stiles’ answer about the American dream and life itself and the meaning of the light. Kira leaned into him as she walked, miraculously keeping herself upright. Everything felt right.

And again, in the back of his mind, he waited for the other shoe to drop. Somehow, it always did.

“Oh, hey man, quick question. Is it alright if I skip lacrosse practice today? I know it’s important and we have a game coming up,” Stiles said quickly. He raised his eyebrows, trying his best to look sad. One day, Scott was going to have to tell Stiles that the puppy dog look really did not work for his benefit, especially not on his best friend. “I want to help Malia prepare for that pre-calc test later this week. I hear it’s going to be killer.”

Malia stopped in front of her English classroom, looking almost offended. “You told me it would be easy,” she said.

Stiles froze in place, and then frowned, trying to look confused. “I don’t think I said _easy_ exactly. I might have said that it wouldn’t be as hard as decoding the dead pool, but I really don’t think the word _easy_ came out of my mouth.”

“I distinctly remember you saying that it would be easy. A breeze, even. I’m not sure what that phrase means but it sounds fairly simple,” Malia said.

Scott patted Stiles on the shoulder. “You’re good, man. I’ll try to cover with Coach.”

Kira and Scott left Stiles and Malia to talk it over and made their way to their biology class. With Kira in the class, he was starting to really appreciate the subject in a way that he hadn’t before; not that he was bad at it or even hated it. Biology was one of his favorite subjects in school. But something about his girlfriend just made it much more interesting.

“Doesn’t Lydia usually tutor Malia in pre-calc?” Kira asked as they entered the classroom.

The thought hadn’t even crossed Scott’s mind, but now that she mentioned it, he realized it was true. And it wasn’t like Lydia to just drop her tutoring sessions. “Usually, yeah. Maybe she is just busy. Come to think of it, I didn’t see her this morning. Do you think…?” Panic hit him harder than he would have liked; panic and the sudden desire to protect his pack.

This was it. This was the other shoe, falling down and hitting the floor. The perceived echo sent panic through Scott’s system, and he tried to count the number of days since he had seen Lydia. She wasn’t in school yesterday, either. And had he seen her on Sunday? Why could he not remember seeing her? How could he have missed her yesterday? How could he not have noticed that she wasn’t standing by her locker like she usually is in the morning? But she could have just been in the library today. She did that, occasionally. When she didn’t want to talk to people. Scott felt his fingers tense and his senses stretch out, trying desperately to catch a scent or a noise or anything, anything that would confirm that Lydia was on the grounds.

 

He couldn’t catch the perfume she sometimes wore, nor could he hear her heels hitting tile anywhere. He had gotten so used to keeping watch on his friends that he could tell their footsteps apart from the hundreds at Beacon Hills, he could distinguish their heartbeats from one another when they were in the same room. Derek had told him it was an alpha thing, that he could identify them faster and better than anyone else. They were his pack. And he felt his blood run cold when he realized his pack was currently incomplete. And most likely in danger.

“She’s not here, Kira. I can’t… I can’t hear her anywhere.” He looked over at his girlfriend, and he could see his worry reflected in her eyes. “When was the last time you saw her?”

“Are you talking about Lydia?” Scott’s concentration shattered as Stiles took the seat in front of him.

Scott felt guilty even hearing her name out loud. _How could he not have noticed she was gone?_ If Allison were here she would have killed Scott for not looking out for Lydia. Not that it even mattered, because Lydia was his friend and he wanted to kill himself for not looking out for her. She had been struggling more than any of them after Allison and after the dead pool. He hadn’t noticed that one of his best friends wasn’t even here – _what kind of alpha was he?_ “She’s not here, Stiles. I would be able to tell if she was at school and she’s not. We have to go look for her, I need to-“

“Dude,” Stiles said quietly, stopping Scott cold. Stiles wasn’t worried. Why wasn’t he worried? This was Lydia Martin they were talking about. “It’s Aiden’s birthday today. Or, you know, would have been. I overheard her talking to Ethan on the phone last week.”

Oh. “Oh.”

“Yeah. I don’t think…” he stopped, trying to find the words. Scott could feel the guilt coming off of his best friend at the mention of Aiden’s name. The smell was overwhelming, and he felt bad for both Stiles and a former pack member. He made a mental note to call Ethan just to see how he was holding up. “I don’t think she could handle school today. Or, you know, seeing me.” Stiles turned around, pulling out his notebook and a pencil. Scott could tell he was trying his best to forget about it, to focus on what the teacher was saying. He knew Stiles didn’t completely blame himself for the Nogitsune’s actions, but it was hard not to feel responsible for something like that.

It was hard not to feel responsible for hurting the people you care about. And there was no one the Nogitsune had hurt worse than Lydia.

Kira put a hand reassuringly on Scott’s arm. “I didn’t notice she was gone, either. Don’t feel bad.”

He appreciated her, but he couldn’t help it. Even if Lydia was out mourning for Aiden, she shouldn’t have to be alone. But then again – and Scott glanced over at Kira as she took notes and looked up toward Stiles who was paying attention as diligently as his brain would allow and thought about Malia, only three classrooms over – Lydia seemed to be alone more often than not these days. While they were all enjoying each other’s company and the lack of supernatural threat to their lives, she was reading or studying or working with Chris. She had even started tutoring after school to help her mom with money and fill her time with something that didn’t involve them.

He didn’t blame her for wanting to spend time away from the pack. He thought she preferred it that way these days, but he wondered if she also wanted to avoid the awkward feeling of fifth wheeling. If she felt it necessary to stay out of their way while they were happy. He had noticed how hard it was for her to keep the fake smile on her face recently, and wondered if she still felt like her world was coming apart even though it seemed that all of theirs were finally being put back together.

Scott took his phone out from his pocket, and discreetly sent off a text to Lydia.

  _T_ _ext back. I need to know you’re okay._

Then another.

_Please_.

* * *

“Please!”

Her throat burned. Despite knowing that, logically, she shouldn’t be wasting all of her energy, she couldn’t help it. When human beings panic, there is a disconnect between the brain and the rest of the body. She wanted to scream and thrash and exhaust herself, all in the desperate hope that someone (and her mind immediately moved to Scott or _Stiles_ or Kira or hell, even Derek) would hear her and come for her. They had to know she was gone. And if they were looking for her, she wants to draw attention to herself. Sometime last night, she had run out of tears to cry, and so her empty ducts burned too with the strong desire to release something from her body. She blinked a few more times, trying to produce some sort of salty liquid, but nothing came. She twisted her wrists in their leather holders and felt the weight of imprisonment, the pain of being trapped. The cuffs chafed against her skin and the chains felt heavier each time she jerked her hands up.

Lydia knew that she should be quietly figuring out how to get herself out of this situation. She knew that screaming for help, if it didn’t work the first dozen or so times, would not help the hundredth time. Or the thousandth.

She just couldn’t stop herself.

“Please,” she whimpered. “I just need water, please. I know you can hear me!”

Yesterday, she hoped that someone was out there, listening. There was no way she was stranded out here, so far away that even her scream couldn’t reach her alpha. She had yanked her chains forward again, almost relishing the slight pain that came from the leather wrapped underneath the metal cuffs. It kept her thinking, kept her sharp.

Today, she knew that she wasn’t alone. That someone was certainly close enough to hear her screaming. From the pain, she had been able to concentrate on the cracks and strain her ears against the silence and discern slight footsteps. She knew that if she were able to hear those steps, they must belong to a very large person, but to her fragile and sensitive ears, they sounded so small.

As far as she could tell, Lydia had been in this cellar for over a day. The small cracks of light around the door had brightened and faded and brightened again, meaning night had come and gone. Sometime last night, when she woke up from a miserable, stressful sleep on the unforgiving ground, she started feeling her surroundings. She had grasped thin tendrils that kept thickening until her chains stopped her from going any further; she clawed at round husks until she could smell the fresh scent of the exposed green wood underneath.

Slowly it dawned on her what it meant to have those hours pass. What it meant to be awake now, in the second day of her capture (she thinks that maybe she should start marking the dirt around her to keep track, so she doesn’t go mad. But then she thinks about the fact that she can hear voices and is trapped in a cellar, and thinks that maybe going a little mad would be okay). It was Tuesday. Tuesday, September 30. Aiden’s birthday.

Whatever hot panic she had within her finally disappeared; it gave way to a quiet determination to escape by any means necessary when she realized what day it was. And for now, that meant trying to get the attention of her captor so she knew what she was up against. For some reason, knowing that it was the birthday of someone she lost, someone that she had cared about and someone that she still missed, calmed her and fortified her. It gave her a reason to survive, to live because he couldn’t. Because _she_ couldn’t.

Lydia clamped her eyes shut, and relaxed against the roots of the tree.

For some reason that she didn’t want to fathom, the roots made her feel safer, more secure, and substantially less weak. She took a few deep breaths and settled in before closing her eyes. The world slowed, and Lydia took more deep breaths to settle herself. She needed to be proactive, not reactive. She could fight this, she was sure she could get out of here if only she knew what she was up against.

She slid her right hand over the chains keeping her left arm down, letting her fingers trail as far down as they could before the familiar tug pulled her right wrist back. The chains were solid, nearly perfectly made. Each link connected to the next without so much as a kink or weak spot that should feel. There was nothing around her that could be used to wear the chains down, and her nearly nonexistent physical strength certainly wasn’t going to break them. If only she could find a way to turn her mental prowess into physical strength, she would probably be stronger than Scott McCall. 

* * *

Scott stared at his phone for a solid minute, still worried. Lydia hadn’t texted him back, and while he knew that this wasn’t a total warning sign for danger, it was pretty damn close. Lydia never _didn’t_ text back unless something was really bad. And either she was so upset that she didn’t want to respond to him, in which case he wanted to be there for her in whatever way he could, or she was in danger and couldn’t respond to him. If that were the case…

He sat in the locker room by himself and frowned. Everyone else, besides Stiles, would be here in a few minutes to gear up before practice; Scott had asked Coach to leave economics a few minutes early so he could take care of something training related before practice started. He had told him that he was working on something new that he was sure would help the freshman build stamina. He didn’t think Coach believed him, but Finstock really couldn’t care less when it came to his captain. Scott knew he could tell there was something off about his star players and Stilinski, but didn’t want to think about it.

He glanced up at the clock. Three minutes.

He might as well get it over with.

Scott hit the green icon on the screen, and waited for the call to connect. It rang and rang, and Scott cursed his luck and his timing. It was a long shot to expect Ethan to pick up, especially given what day it was and everything that had happened, but he had hoped. He had desperately hoped that Ethan would pick up and say, yes, yes she is here with me, she’s just going through something, she couldn’t talk. Yes. Lydia is safe.

  _"_ _Hey, you’ve reached Ethan. Leave a message.”_

A quick breath. “Hey, Ethan. It’s Scott. McCall. Man, I hope you’re doing okay and I’m sorry to call you out of the blue like this, but I was wondering if you’d seen or heard from Lydia today. She just… she wasn’t in school and I know it’s your birthday, and I was wondering if she… Call me back if you’ve seen her. Thanks.”

He hung up the phone and balled his free hand into a dangerously tight fist. He heard the bell ring and, as he stood up to change into his practice gear, he listened to whispered words and loud laughs echo throughout the school. He tried listening for her name to see if someone knew or had talked to her; he also tried drawing up a list of names, friends outside of the pack that might now, but Scott found himself coming up blank. The only name outside of his pack that even came to mind when he thought of Lydia was Danny.

But Danny had left, graduating early from high school to get out of Beacon Hills, and as he thought about it he realized exactly how alone Lydia had been.

“Liam, look, I know that she is your friend-“

“I would hardly call _Lydia Martin_ my friend.”

Scott heard her name not more than a few feet away from him, and he looked up. Liam and Mason walked in to the locker room, hardly taking notice of the captain sitting next to Finstock’s office. They were too wrapped up in their own conversation.

“Dude, whatever. You spend a lot of time around her and Scott and their group. Which, I would point is, is more than you spend with me anymore and you claim I’m your best friend.” Mason’s voice carried slightly in the locker room; he and Liam were the first to get in, and there were no other noises to cancel out their conversation. Scott didn’t even need to use his wolf senses to hear everything. “All I’m saying is, it’s rude not to show up to something when you have an obligation.”

Liam snorted, and Scott could almost hear his eyes rolling. “What do you even need tutoring for, anyway? You aren’t going to be taking the PSAT for another two years.”

Scott heard a locker clang open and listened while Liam shifted around. “She is a national merit scholar and she got one of the highest ten scores in the country on the PSAT her freshman year of high school. Lydia is graduating in May, and there is no way I am letting that opportunity pass. She could help me get into an Ivy League with _a full scholarship_. Not all of us have insane lacrosse skills to rely on.” 

The locker closed as the rest of the team filed in to the locker room to change. Mason and Liam rounded the corner and took a seat not far from Scott, still engrossed in their conversation. “Maybe you got something confused. She usually tutors you on Tuesdays, right? She will probably be in the library today, waiting for you,” Liam said.

“Nah, she sent me a text on Sunday asking for us to move the session forward. She said she had something on Tuesday, and while she would see me at school, she wouldn’t be available afterward. I agreed, and she replied, and I quote,” Mason took out his phone and clicked open a message. “‘Great! I will see you on Monday at the usual time.’ She never showed up. It’s just rude.”

A few other people glanced in their direction, and Scott wondered what they were overhearing.

“Maybe,” Liam said, and finally glanced over at Scott, almost as if he was just realizing he was there. He, too, realized people were listening, even if it was just to get gossip on one of the captain’s friends. Liam lowered his voice, low enough so Mason could hear and Scott could hear but no one else, and continued. “Maybe something _else_ came up.” Scott knew that Liam was trying to ask him, discreetly, if something supernatural had torn Lydia away from her obligations. “Because you know she isn’t one to forget something.”

“That’s what made it so weird,” Mason said, his voice slowing down and taking on a sarcastic tone. “Why did you have to be so quiet to say that? You know what. I don’t even want to know. I’m just going to go, and sit in the library while you practice, and hope you’re right about Lydia.”

Mason got up and finally took notice of Scott by nodding slightly. Liam and Scott both watched him leave, and then Liam quickly moved to his alpha’s side. “Please tell me there is a reason she didn’t show up,” Liam said, how voice still quiet.

“Not one that I know of,” Scott replied darkly.

He knew there was something wrong, he _knew_ it. Lydia didn’t skip school for two days, didn’t bow out of her obligations, for no reason whatsoever. She had planned to see Mason. She _told him_ that she would be in school today. Even if it was Aiden’s birthday, she was planning on being here.

Scott heard his phone vibrate in his locker, and nearly ran over to it. Ethan’s name flashed on the screen. He picked up, and swallowed hard, fearing the words that came next but somehow knowing they would.

“Ethan.”

“Scott. I got your message.” Scott clenched his eyelids shut, hating the way that Ethan was speaking. He was worried. He was really worried. “I haven’t. Seen her, I mean. We were supposed to meet today and I’ve called her twice and she hasn’t picked up. I was hoping she was with you guys, but if she’s not, then…”

The fear was building back in his system, and Scott felt an urge to rip something apart. “Yeah. She’s missing,” he said, hating the way the words sounded. They weren’t grave enough, weren’t severe enough. She’s missing. Lydia was gone. And it had taken him _two days_ to notice.

“I’m going to call Danny,” he heard Ethan say on the other side of the line. “We will both come out to Beacon Hills.”

“You don’t have to come,” Scott said. “I know that it’s hard for you to be here.”

Ethan laughed with no trace of humor. “This is Lydia. She’s my friend. I’m going to help you find her before…” there was no need to finish that sentence. Scott already knew they were both expecting the worst. “Anyway, Aiden would have wanted me to help.”

Scott thanked him and they hung up. The rest of the team was filing out of the locker room under Finstock’s command, but Liam stood by Scott, looking up at him. Scott felt a million different emotions boiling under his skin – anger, disappointment, defensiveness, hatred, worry – and it was hard to get them all under control.

He could feel his eyes involuntarily turn red.

“Liam,” Scott growled, balling his free hand into a fist again. He felt his claws pierce the inside of his palm and he calmed down slightly, ever so slightly. “I need you to get everyone together. Tell them to meet at my house. I’ve got to tell Coach that we can’t make it to practice. You’ve suddenly got a bad stomach bug.”

He saw Liam nod out of his peripheral. He tried his best to look miserably green and sick, and failed, but it didn’t matter. They were skipping practice even if Finstock didn’t believe them. Liam took out his phone and started typing, stopping only once he had sent out the notification to the pack.

He glanced up at Scott, worry evident on his face. “We’re going to find her, right?”

“You’re damn right we are.”

Someone had taken her. His pack. His friend. His _sister_. His Lydia. And they better hope that Scott finds her in one piece, alive and unharmed.

Because he would not hesitate to rip their throat out.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Also let me know if my characterization needs work. I'm trying to be as in character as I can for everyone.


	3. we were never here

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> This chapter is entirely from Stiles POV and I'm so sorry if it's bad. I'm really worried my characterization of him is just... off. 
> 
> Oh well. Next chapter is being written, and features much more Lydia. And explains some things.

Stiles ignored the slight buzzing in his pocket in favor of the heavy textbook in front of him; as much as he wanted to know what was so important that Liam had to call him ( _twice,_ he might add), he declared his room a no-phone zone during study hours. Which, judging by the piles of crumpled and ripped up paper surrounding his bed, could be until midnight tonight.

Malia’s head hit her textbook with a thunk and he heard her whine slightly into the inked page. He hadn’t missed the bags under her eyes this morning, or the way that she could barely keep her eyes open in pre-calculus before lunch. Maybe they would have to call it a night a little before midnight, so she could finally get a good night’s sleep. He didn’t want her to be completely exhausted; after all, he remembered reading somewhere that sleep deprivation was just as bad as, if not worse than, taking drugs before a test. Or something like that; he never was quite sure on the details. Regardless, though, he knew that sleep was good, and Malia needed sleep, so she wouldn’t be able to stay up until the wee hours of the morning studying, or… or… doing _other_ things. She needed to sleep. But that might also mean that he would have to make his bedroom a Malia-free zone for the night, and Stiles Stilinski certainly didn’t want to do that.

“I hate math. I hate math so much.” Malia lifted her head and knocked the textbook off the desk, watching with no small amount of pleasure as it fell into his already crowded trashcan.

“Hey now!” he said quickly. Stiles pushed his own book to the side and rolled off of his bed, coming to stand between her and the waste basket. “Whatever struggling relationship you have with math doesn’t mean you get to take it out on my poor trashcan.” He pulled the textbook out of the waste, making a mental note to finally empty it as he tore a few inches of red tape, pulled down from his last mystery board, from the cover. He really was bad about getting rid of things; for some reason, he couldn’t bring himself to throw away the contents of this can. He couldn’t tell if it was laziness or a lingering attachment to the contents of his last mystery, but he tried not to think about it too much. The tape fell back into the trash. Stiles glanced over at her work and opened the book, trying to find the page she was working from.

He could feel Malia’s narrowed eyes of annoyance as he flipped through every page, scanning it for just the right problem. “This is pointless,” she said. “I’m never going to understand it, and I’m certainly not going to use it. I never needed to know how fast a rabbit was running in order to catch it.” She pouted, her lower lip jutting out just slightly. Stiles knew that she would never admit it was pouting, because as he discovered a few weeks ago, coyotes _do not_ pout; still, he found the way her eyebrows scrunched together to be more adorable than he could ever say. He wanted to stop and kiss her, right there, but couldn’t stand the thought of distracting her. She needed to study.

“No one ever said you had to love math,” he said, and then tried his best to concentrate on finding that last problem, to no avail. He wondered if she even did it correctly, because the more he looked at it, the less it looked like an answer to a math problem. “It’s not like you’re ever going to win the Nobel prize for mathematics.” Wait, no. That wasn’t right. It wasn’t the Nobel Prize, it was something else. He stopped searching, a memory drawing a fond smile to his lips. “Or a Fields Medal. The Fields Medal is the one you won’t be winning.” He could almost hear Lydia berating him for messing it up, again, and he couldn’t help but smile wider, just imagining it. The familiar eye roll, the way her lips would purse ever so slightly before correcting him; it was all so very _Lydia_ , and with the way she had been avoiding the pack recently, it was the closest thing he could get to talking to her.

“I don’t understand. What’s a Fields Medal? And why do you smell so happy? Does math make you happy?”

Stiles dropped the book in surprise, the noise of the book hitting the wood of his desk barely enough to shake the shock out of his system. He hadn’t meant to smell happy, he wanted to say, it just happened. The smell just happened! “What- I… What have I told you about smelling people’s emotions without their permission and then commenting on it?”

Malia frowned, and looked like she was concentrating more than she should have to in order remember his lesson on smelling emotions. For a normal person, there wouldn’t even _need_ to be a lesson on smelling emotions, but Malia was pretty much as far from normal as she could get. “But you told me that I should use it to my advantage so I know when to empathize with people and when to be quiet. You said it was okay.”

Sometimes it bothered him just how well Malia hung on to pretty much everything he had ever told her. Would it kill her to just forget things every once in a while, or at least not remember exactly what he said and use those words against him? Take, for example, this morning when she somehow remembered that he had said the test would be easy, even though he knew he jammed it in between some other phrases so she would be comforted without latching on to the simplicity. He pinched the oft-touched skin on the bridge of his nose and sighed, letting his eyes drift closed for a few seconds. “Yeah, but you shouldn’t _comment_ on it. Use it to your advantage, _silently_. Without words. I know I’m happy. For regular people, it’s weird that you do, too.”

She hesitated for a second, as if she were updating a mental list of acceptable public behaviors. _Rule number how ever many hundred he’s given her: Don’t let people know you smell them or their emotions._ “Noted,” she said with a slight nod. “Now, are you going to pick up the phone or are we going to ignore the five missed calls and seven texts between the two of us?”

Stiles’ hand froze in midair; he was going to pick up the textbook and start leafing through it again to find the problem that he was now certain she had royally screwed up, but now the thought, like so many others in his lifetime, left his head altogether. “Wait, what do you mean?”

“You haven’t heard our phones going off? I know you declared this a ‘no-phone zone,’” she said, and he didn’t appreciate her use of air quotes. He was going to have to talk to Kira about teaching Malia very 90s-era methods to express sarcasm. In his opinion, you should only use things like air quotes when the other person clearly does not understand sarcasm, and there is no person who understands sarcasm better than him. “But doesn’t this seem like some kind of emergency? I mean, whoever it is has called me twice. No one calls me when they know I’m with you. Usually they just call you.”

He changed course completely, moving away from the desk and back to his bed. She was right, everyone who had her number knew to call him instead of her when they were together. It was just easier to get a hold of them that way,  because while Stiles was easily distracted and liable to pick up the phone in almost any circumstance, Malia could be very… single-minded when it came to spending time with him. He clicked on his missed calls and saw that Liam had called twice in the past two hours, and Scott called not more than two minutes ago. And the texts were even worse; he had one from Liam saying to come to the McCall house and three from Scott, saying _Come over._ Then, _It’s an emergency_. And finally, _She’s gone. Lydia’s gone._

Panic built in his stomach and snaked its way through his veins. Stiles could feel his arms shaking and typed, _We’re on our way._

“Malia. Malia, we have to go.” He dropped his phone in his pocket and fumbled quickly around his room, searching for his keys and his shoes and everything else he would need. Malia put a hand on his shoulder and asked what was wrong and he told her, running his hands through his hair, that Lydia was missing  and he couldn’t find his shoes and they had to go. They needed to go and she was _gone_ and he wasn’t wearing any shoes and… and… Lydia was gone. She had been gone. He thought about it, brain racing, and knew that she had been gone for two days. She wasn’t in class yesterday but he had thought… that… and of course today, she was gone today. But he assumed that was Aiden, that she couldn’t handle seeing him and knowing Aiden was dead and it was his fault, kind of.

“Stiles,” Malia’s voice stopped the free fall of thoughts, and brought him back to the present.  “Stiles, calm down. I know about Lydia, Kira left me a voicemail,” she said. He was suddenly very aware of her eyes looking into his as she lifted his face up and then pulled him off the bed. He tried to protest, tried to say that he wasn’t decent, but she kept pulling him up. He wasn’t decent because Lydia was _gone_ and he didn’t notice. She could be in danger, real, mortal danger. “I know you’re worried, but now isn’t the time to freak out.”

He couldn’t help it. Stiles felt like every single inch of his skin was trying to crawl right off of him and leave him more deeply exposed than he had ever been in his life. He could feel his nerves tingling and could just hear the words repeating themselves over and over in his head. She’s gone. She’s gone. How did he not notice? How did he not freak out when she wasn’t in school today? He should have freaked out, he should have been calling everyone he knows and making sure that she was safe but he didn’t. He let it slide.

She had been spending so much time away from the pack recently; away from him... and Scott and everyone else.  She still helped them when they needed it, but, he realized, she was distancing herself from them. He could tell that she was avoiding them. Lydia had done everything in her power to separate herself from them, to back away from all supernatural activities and movie nights and studying with the pack. He knew that it had to have been hard on her, to be around Scott without Allison, to talk to him when it was the Nogitsune’s fault that Allison and Aiden were dead. He hadn’t reached out to her, though. He had wanted to, of course, but he also knew that she wanted her space. That she didn’t want to be pestered and surrounded by all of her friends. In fact, the few times he had tried to reach out to her, invite her to hang out with him and Malia, she turned him down, citing anything and everything from studying to washing Prada. He could tell an obvious lie, and knew, just knew, that she was going through things.

And, goddamnit, Scott had realized that she was missing and in danger before he had realized it. Wasn’t Lydia his friend, too? One of his best friends? Didn’t he used to know exactly where she was and what she was doing pretty much every day? Even a few months ago, before Allison died, they spent so much time together and now… Now? These days, he barely noticed when she wasn’t in school. Stiles hated himself for not making more of an effort with her. Even if she was pushing herself away from him, they were friends. And weren’t friends supposed to reach out when the other was struggling? And hadn’t Lydia been struggling more than everyone else? Maybe it was a banshee thing, and he had ignored the warning signs. He had blatantly ignored the ‘regular human needing help’ signs, that’s for sure.

He thought about the times where he would find her in the library, when he came in searching for some book to answer another question from Malia or Scott, and would catch her quietly crying or staring off into the distance and not seeing a thing. He had let those times go. He told himself that if she needed help she would come to them, come to _him_.

It felt like his heart was sinking through his chest and falling into some deep pit. Lydia was gone. Lydia was gone and she could be… could be… He stopped himself from thinking it. He would know if she were dead. He didn’t know how, or why, but he knew that something would tell him.

Stiles glanced over at his girlfriend, who was standing with her arms crossed over her chest and her phone clutched in her hand. Malia stared back, her face filled with worry and he could tell by the way that she moved her lips that she was also a little upset. A fleeting thought crossed his mind, and he wondered exactly what he smelled like right now. She changed her stance, eyes softening and body opening up as she crouched down to be able to see into his downcast eyes.

Malia rubbed his shoulder, and then let her hand drop. He knew she was unsure of what to do next, or how to proceed. She had never been good at comforting other people, preferring to be brutally honest and to the point. Man, he must _reek_ with guilt if she wasn’t telling him to quit sulking and get a move on. But the way that she squinted up at him and cocked her head… it seemed like she was getting other smells, too. Probably despair or self-hatred. He bet it was self-hatred.  “We need to go, Stiles,” she said seriously, still trying to get a read on his emotions.

Stiles turned away from her, his eyes trailing around the room and looking anywhere but at her face. “Yeah, I’ll be down in a second. I’ve just got to… I’ve got to get my shoes on. I can’t go barefoot,” he said, trying to insert some type of life into his voice. Trying to show that he was fine, he was normal, he could still be funny. It failed miserably, but Malia took his ill-cast bait, and left him to head down to the Jeep and wait. Stiles’ head fell into his hands for a few seconds, and he had to will himself not to start panicking again. Lydia didn’t need him to be an emotional wreck; she needed him to find her. She didn’t need guilt or excuses about why she was allowed to drift away, why he didn’t reach out to her and keep her close to him, to the pack. He shoved his feet into the nearest pair of shoes he could find, and then got up to follow her out the door, only to stop by the trashcan.

He heard the door downstairs close, and he bent down, reaching his hand past the piles of paper and wrappers and tape he had been too lazy to throw out, finally stopping when his fingers brushed up against something substantial. Stiles wrapped his fingers around the frame and pulled it up, looking at the drawing of the nemeton that he had kept for all of these months. Malia found it while they were cleaning the boards and threw it out, saying there was no reason to keep it around. After all, it had served its purpose. They already knew where that “stupid tree” was.

Without even thinking, he pulled the note from the back of the frame, and looked at his handwriting. _For Lydia._ He still knew every word he had written on the page, every sentiment he wanted to get across to her. How she amazed him, and he trusted her, and how this drawing was going to be a reminder that she was the smartest one of them all. That she could save people. And he was glad, _so glad_ , to count her as one of his best friends. He brushed his thumb across the glass and looked down at it, the guilt eating away at him. At the time, he had wanted to say more, but she was with Aiden then and now he was with Malia. It just didn’t feel right.

He took the note and carefully slid it into his pocket, staring at the drawing for just a few more seconds before setting it down and heading out the door. He felt the urge to say her name out loud but stopped himself, mostly for is own sake, to keep him from falling apart and panicking again. He made a promise, quiet and silent and lonely, to give her the message when he found her in one piece.

And he would never, ever abandon her again.

Stiles stepped out of his front door and got in the front seat of the Jeep, cranking the engine in silence. Malia watched him out of the side of her eye, but neither of them said a thing the whole drive. He didn’t even realize they were moving, didn’t even feel his arms twist and swerve to take the turns to get from his house to Scott’s. He was driving from memory alone, barely aware of his surroundings and certainly unaware of the girl sitting next to him. All he could do was run over scenario after scenario in his head. _God, she must be so scared_ , he thought. He knew what it was like to wake up somewhere you didn’t recognize, to feel like you are trapped and you can’t get out. That’s how he felt when the McCalls found him in Malia’s cave all those months ago. Scared and alone and helpless. And she had come for him when that happened. She had used her powers to track him down and tried to figure out where he was; she had done everything in her power. And it didn’t even matter that she was wrong.

Lydia had known when he was gone. She had heard him, she felt the disturbance. She had come looking for him and within hours he was home. She called his dad even though he told Scott not to. Lydia didn’t care. She wanted to make sure he was safe.

“Stiles,” Malia said, again pulling him out of his thoughts. He looked over at her, startled, wondering how long they had been sitting in this driveway. “We should go inside.”

“Yeah,” he said uncertainly. “Yeah, I suppose we should.”

They got out of the car and walked in the front door, not even knocking to confirm it was okay. Scott was sitting in the middle of the couch, with Kira and Liam flanking him on either side. Ethan stood behind the chair where Danny was sitting. Great, they were the last ones to arrive. And, judging by how deep in conversation Ethan and Scott were, they were the last ones to arrive by at least an hour. As soon as Mali shut the door behind them, all five pairs of eyes refocused on them. Kira was grateful but worried, Liam just looked upset, Scott was angry, Danny was unreadable as usual, and Ethan was disgusted.

“Hey guys,” Stiles said. “Sorry we’re, uh… sorry we’re late.”

“I was studying for math,” Malia informed them. “Stiles says we’re not allowed to use our phones while studying.”

Under the weight of everyone’s gaze, Stiles became uncomfortable. His hand moved to the back of his head and he tried to grin sheepishly, but he had a feeling it looked more like a grimace or a scowl. Ethan snorted and rolled his eyes, and Danny just looked away at the same time that Scott and Kira refocused their energies on the topic at hand. Malia and Stiles took their place with their friends and allies, with her sitting on a chair and him standing slightly behind.

“What do we know?” Stiles asked, looking at each of his friends in turn. “Besides the fact that she’s missing.”

“Honestly? Not that much,” Scott said. “We know she was fine on Sunday – she talked to Danny and texted Mason – but Monday morning, she wasn’t at school. And she hasn’t came back. When she didn’t come home last night, her mom filed a missing person’s report, but those take at least 24 hours to go through, and the Sheriff delayed the report, just in case it was, you know, supernatural.”

“You talked to my dad?” Stiles asked. He hadn’t even thought of that, hadn’t even thought of going through the proper channels. “Wait, he didn’t put the report through?”

Scott shrugged. “I kind of don’t blame him. We’ve been disappearing a lot because of supernatural occurrences. You and I barely tell _our_ parents what’s going on, and Lydia’s mom doesn’t know about any of this because we were worried she might put Lydia in some asylum. Remember?”

Stiles nodded and ran a hand through his hair. “Yeah. Yeah, I remember.”

Scott cleared his throat and turned back to the assembled pack. “Okay, so, our plan of action. I was thinking-“

“Hold up,” Ethan said. He turned and gave a very pointed look in Stiles’ direction. “Now that everyone is here, I just want clarification on one point. How the _fuck_ did none of you notice she was missing?” There was an accusation in his tone, an insinuation that they had seriously screwed up. They all, silently, agreed. “You say you all are her friends?”

Stiles wanted to defend himself, wanted to defend the pack, but Ethan’s glare was too much to handle. His voice had left him or there was a cat grabbing his tongue or something, because when Stiles opened his mouth, no words came out. Instead, he just opened it and closed it, and then clenched his fists and looked away. The blame was rightly placed on their shoulders.

“That’s not fair,” Malia said, suddenly. Ethan glanced down at her. “She seems to disappear a lot. How can it be our fault that we aren’t watching her constantly?”

“No one ever said you had to watch her constantly,” he shot back, fury in his voice. “You just have to notice when she is gone. I did, and I don’t even live around here. Neither does he,” Ethan said, jabbing a finger in the air toward Danny. “And yet, he got here faster than you and loverboy.” Malia started to say something, then caught herself, her eyes sliding over to Stiles. Her expression seemed to say, _Can you believe this guy?_

Danny gripped Ethan’s hand momentarily, and said a few things under his breath that escaped Stiles’ human ears. The werewolf huffed and looked away, saying something back. Something quiet. Something less harsh. There was a response from Danny, and though Stiles’ couldn’t make out the words, he caught Lydia’s name. Ethan agreed, and then Danny nodded. Both of them turned to Scott, looking at him expectantly. “Alright, what is your plan?”

Scott, who Stiles guessed had heard the entire exchange, gave Danny a wan smile. “First, we have to piece together what happened. I’m going to go over to Lydia’s house with whoever wants to come with me to see if I can catch any scents from her room. When I went over there after school, I couldn’t get inside but I didn’t get anything from the outside of the house. I think someone should talk to her mother and see if Lydia had been acting suspicious; if it was banshee related, then hopefully Lydia was exhibiting some weird signs before then.”

“Have you called Mr. Argent?” Danny asked, looking between them. “He’s a hunter, right? He is an expert at tracking and following supernatural creatures. And Lydia is almost like another daughter to him. I think he would want to know.” Stiles wondered when Danny had learned all of this information, when Lydia had told him about her relationship with Mr. Argent. He hadn’t even realized they were close friends or anything other than acquaintances. “What about Derek Hale? Why isn’t he here?”

“And you guys have questioned Peter, right?” Ethan asked, staring directly at Scott, but Scott turned away. No, they hadn’t questioned Peter. But, Stiles knew from Scott’s expression, he wanted to.

“What’s Peter got to do with anything?” Malia questioned, suddenly staring coldly at Ethan. “Why should we question him?”

Ethan looked at her as if she came from another planet. _We don’t have time for this bickering_ , Stiles thought to himself. There wasn’t time to explain why Malia was defensive of Peter and why everyone else freaking hated him. “He’s an asshole,” Ethan said. “And he’s also more of a villain than my old pack put together.”

“Plus, he’s attacked Lydia once already and is the reason she’s a banshee,” Danny added. “He could have done something again.”

“He’s the reason she’s a banshee? None of you ever told me that,” Malia said uncertainly. “If you think he is a suspect, I’ll go over and ask him myself. Peter will tell me the truth.”

Ethan opened his mouth to say something, but Danny shook his head and Ethan listened, letting his reply die in his throat. The room went quiet for a few seconds. Stiles knew this was an uneasy alliance between them; Ethan had never forgiven Stiles and Danny only really kept in contact with Lydia. They didn’t work with the pack and he figured they didn’t have a desire to get wrapped up in the Beacon Hills supernatural soap opera. But they had. For Lydia.

“We’re not going to solve this by sitting here and talking to each other, not without information,” Scott said. “I will go talk to Peter and call Mr. Argent. Malia and Stiles, go over to Lydia’s house and see what you can pick up. Malia, you’re going to be looking for scents. Stiles, look for anything out of the ordinary and get in contact with the Sheriff’s office to make sure that your dad and Parrish are looking for her. Danny, you said you had a few contacts that might be able to help. Can you and Ethan get in touch with them? Kira, take Liam and talk to both your mom and Deaton. They might not know much, but if we assume that Lydia was kidnapped instead of wandering off… then it might be good to know why.”

They all nodded and started moving. Danny and Ethan left first, and on the way out, Stiles heard Danny apologize to Scott for Ethan’s behavior. “He cares a lot about Lydia, but seeing Stiles on his and Aiden’s birthday…”

“I know,” Scott said quietly. “Tell him I’m sorry. I’m so sorry for everything.”

Danny smiled weakly and nodded, walking out the door. Kira and Liam followed them, and Malia tugged on Stiles’ sleeve, trying to get him out of the door. He didn’t move and looked at Scott instead. His best friend had been watching him, carefully, since he came, and Stiles knew he wanted something. Wanted to ask him something. “I’ll be out in a second,” he said quietly to her. “I need… he and I need to talk.” Malia didn’t say or word as she let go of him and exited the house, not bothering to fight.

Scott and Stiles stayed still for a minute and stared at each other. Stiles wanted to say something sarcastic, something about Scott undressing him with his eyes, but it wasn’t appropriate and he couldn’t find the air in his lungs to expel the words. He couldn’t find anything in himself to smile, even halfheartedly.

“Stiles,” Scott said slowly. “Are you okay? You look… pale.” Translation: He looked broken. Translation: He smelled terrible. Translation: His best friend knew something was up.

The room was silent for a breath, then another. Scott watched Stiles as Stiles watched the floor and he felt his best friend come closer but didn’t move. Stiles tried to swallow the lump in his throat but it never went down. It moved and returned, moved and returned, threatening to close up his insides for good. He wanted to say that he wasn’t fine, that he wouldn’t be fine until she was here.  He wouldn’t be okay until she was safe because nothing was right without her here. But he couldn’t. He tried to speak, but the only thing that came out was, “Yeah. Yeah man, I’m fine. Just worried.”

Scott didn't say anything for a minute, just stared at him. Stiles wondered if Scott would called his bluff. If he would tell him that he knew Stiles wasn’t fine. He saw Scott’s fist tighten and relax, twice, then three times. “Okay,” Scott said. “Yeah, me too.”

Stiles finally met Scott’s eyes, and he saw guilt and pain and so much else. Scott never was good at hiding his emotions when he was upset, especially when one of their friends was in danger. This was what made him a good leader, a good alpha; Scott’s strength didn’t come from his power or his control over his pack. It didn’t come from murdering people and destroying their lives. His strength came from his desire to protect, from the loyalty he inspired in others, the trust he gave them, and the connections he made. He was powerful because he inspired power in others. Because he wouldn’t leave anyone behind. For the first time since he heard Lydia was missing, Stiles felt a little less panicked; if Scott was looking for her, then she would found. Her alpha wouldn’t stop until he found her, no matter how long it took.

Stiles wanted to say something else, to lessen Scott’s worry. But neither of them said a thing as they left, and Stiles got in his Jeep without even taking one last look at his best friend. Excuses, condolences, pretty little phrases with nice words would have no meaning to either them at the moment. He pulled out of the driveway as Scott’s bike roared to life, going in opposite directions.

“You never told me Peter turned Lydia,” Malia said as they drove.

He glanced over at her, one hand on the steering wheel, the other placed on his forehead. He thought about that night, when he saw her bloodied and lying on the ground and he would have done anything to save her. When he saw Peter standing over Lydia and smiling, a sick kind of pride and joy on his face. Stiles has never wanted to kill someone so much as he did Peter, and he got that feeling that Scott and Lydia felt that way, too. It was Peter’s fault they were in this mess and every goddamned mess they had been in. He bit Scott, he attacked Lydia. For Malia’s sake, he had tried to ignore the hatred, to compartmentalize.

“It wasn’t my background to tell,” he replied. That memory, of Lydia and the field, of the lights turning on and her body… It didn’t feel right to let Malia know he was there, that he wanted to sacrifice himself for Lydia, before Lydia herself knew. That was just another thing, he decided, that he was going to have to let her know if they found her. _When_ they found her.

Stiles and Malia got out of the car and knocked on the door. Stiles waited and Malia listened, her face screwed up in concentration. “I don’t hear footsteps,” she said.

  
Stiles rang the doorbell, but he could tell from Malia’s expression that no one was coming. He wondered if her mom was even here, or if she was down at the station demanding that action be taken. If she had called Lydia’s dad yet. Malia sized up the door, and shrugged. “I can break the door down,” she said quickly. “It really wouldn’t be that hard.”

She suddenly reared up, one leg in the air, and Stiles yelped. “Hey!” he shouted. “We don’t need to break something on every piece of real estate the Martin family owns.” He glanced around, and walked off the small porch, finding a rock in their front garden that he knew had a key underneath. He opened the door and walked inside cautiously, making sure Mrs. Martin wasn’t in the living room or anywhere, really.

Malia stopped for a moment, sniffing the air and looking all around confused. Stiles shut the door and they walked up the stairs together, him on the lookout for small clues and Malia looking more and more distressed. He didn’t see any scratches, and signs that something had been in here and she had fought back. The carpets were perfectly clean. The wood veneer was worn but nothing out of the ordinary.

He and Malia stepped over the threshold into Lydia’s room. The bed was perfectly made, not a wrinkle in the comforter. Lydia’s desk was heavily stacked with books on subjects like psychology, psychosis, art, myths, physics, and just about everything else. She had notebooks with images sketched and notes made about banshees and the voices she heard. He could see her questions for Mr. Argent on a small piece of paper beside a book on Celtic myths; there was also a few copied pages from the Argent’s Bestiary, as well as a few photo copies from various other sources. But besides the obviously mythological things, her desk was also filled with pieces of Lydia’s life. She had complex mathematical problems he was sure she was doing just to calm herself down and take her mind off of things. She had _A Tale of Two Cities,_ one of last year’s required books, sitting next to _Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows_ , but only Harry Potter had a red string sticking out of it to serve as a bookmark. It looked like she was rereading it. He remembered when the book came out when they were in middle school, and how they had both been so excited to talk about it, back before she adamantly pretended that he didn’t exist. She had caught him reading it and started peppering him with questions before she could stop herself, before she remembered that she wasn’t supposed to like reading. She made him swear he would never mention it to anyone.  

But nothing about the desk looked like a problem. Nothing looked like a banshee scream for help, nor did it look like her stuff had been rifled through. He glanced around the room, noticing immediately the overwhelming mark of Allison; there were pictures on the walls that had been there forever but never taken down and a silver arrow sitting on another surface, which was new. Mr. Argent, he guessed, had given her one of Allison’s handcrafted arrows. She was probably the only person in the world besides Allison’s father that had one. And if Lydia had been awake when she was taken, he guessed she would have tried to use it.

“Stiles,” Malia croaked, her voice shaken and worried; it sent alarm up his spine and he looked at her, searching her face. She hadn’t been worried before. Malia liked Lydia alright, but her safety was nothing more than concern for pack. So if she was worried... Could she smell it? Was it something bad? “I think we need to call Scott.”

“Why? What do you smell?” Was it Peter? Some other alpha? Some smell of a deranged wendigo or kamina or some other deadly supernatural creature? He ran through everything he knew, trying to pinpoint the worst thing that could have happened to her.

“Nothing,” she said softly. “I don’t smell anything. It’s like… it’s like she was never here.”


	4. tell my love to wreck it all

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Lydia speaks. Scott goes to Peter. We learn about banshees.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I hope you guys like it. We're delving a little more into the Celtic mythology with this chapter. For those who are wondering... Derek will be coming soon.

_And she could see them talking, she could. They were talking about her and Scott was worried and Stiles, Stiles was breaking and she saw them talking. But voices, voices that were not theirs or hers or Allison’s or Aiden’s or anyone's, floated around her and trapped her, pulled her back. “Ly-di-a. Ly-di-a.” The chanting grew louder and louder still, and she was with Scott but wasn’t with him, she was next to him but wasn’t and he said her name and told her no and she wanted to scream again but she couldn't and…_

Lydia groggily opened her eyes, blinking to re-adjust herself to the darkness that surrounded her. She had been dreaming, she realized with incredible sadness. She wasn’t with Scott or Stiles. She could have sworn she was right there with them talking about some official pack business or making a joke or even just listening to Stiles’ voice but no. She was still trapped in some earthy basement that smelt of dirt and urine with a faint hint of blood from her wrists. Lydia blinked back tears, surprised that after two days without water, her body could still find moisture to express her utmost disappointment. She must have fallen asleep at some point after thoroughly wearing herself out, trying to draw some attention to herself. She squinted up at the cracks and discovered that either another day had past or her fitful sleep had only been a few hours. More than likely, she had just barely passed out.

A sigh escaped her lips and she leaned back into the tree roots to which she was chained, trying to let herself relax. Something about her dream had made her tense and seemed to have drained her of whatever energy her nap should have given to her. More than that, though, the dream left her feeling uneasy and distraught, filled with a dread that she hadn’t known in months. What had it been about? What did she know that her subconscious didn’t want her to fully understand? But the more she tried to remember what was going on, the faster it flitted away, staying just outside of her grasp until all she was left with was the impression of Scott’s eyes on her own before they, too, faded.

Being taken hostage twice in one year was not her idea of a good time and certainly was not reflective of the life she strived to lead. Maybe, she thought wryly, she should just get a tracker inserted into her neck. Then, whenever someone got it in their head to take her to wreck some sort of havoc on her pack, it would be much easier for them to realize that she was gone and come looking for her.

Lydia started up at the ceiling, barely able to make out the hard concrete that loomed overhead. Had they realized she was gone yet? Were they looking for her? She wanted to believe that they were, but she hadn’t even heard from Meredith yet. And, much to her dismay, the voices in her head, the other spirits that she could usually block out, were becoming stronger, louder; it was like a constant, dull scratching in her ears that never went away and kept going over and over and over and over. She would ignore it, and she tried, she tried to hard, but they just kept talking to her and drawing her in. And Lydia read somewhere that the closer banshees are to death, the more connected they are with the otherworld.

Well, she certainly wouldn't doubt it. So she was sure that, if they were looking for her, they would have gone to Meredith, and she would have been able to hear Meredith clearer than she would hear her own thoughts. Not that she would have known what to tell Meredith if she heard her: Please come looking for me, I’m near a tree? That would go over really well.

For the second time since arriving, Lydia’s thoughts were interrupted by footsteps overhead, echoing louder and louder in her cellar. “Hello?” she said hesitantly, straining on her chains for a brief second to try and make noise. “Hello? Is someone up there?”

The footsteps got louder and Lydia’s heart started racing as she raced through each scenario. Whoever was up there obviously knew she was here and was most likely hostile. They could be coming to kill her to… to… _use_ her for reasons she didn’t want to think about, supernatural or otherwise. She swallowed a lump in her throat and tried to subdue her whimpers as the footsteps came right to the door and stopped for a few seconds. The cellar doors jostled and shook, and then the cracks of light grew larger and larger and Lydia was blinded by something other than nearly complete darkness. She couldn’t focus on anything; she couldn’t even see an outline of whoever was descending the rickety stairs that had kept her company for the past few days but she could hear the footsteps on the wood.

“You sure do make a lot of noise,” someone said. Their voice was gruff and low and spoke with some accent that she couldn’t quite place even though she had studied the linguistic makeup of the United States extensively. It was a man, she guessed, from the heaviness of his footsteps and the timbre of his voice. Her eyes strained against the invasion of light and she kept blinking, trying not to lose any more water over the tears that wanted to fall from the absolute shock that light had been to her senses.

“I’m sorry if I’m not being the perfect house guest,” Lydia said. Her voice was hoarse from her screams and moans and words, but she didn’t care. It kept her from sounding as scared as she felt.

Her eyes slowly adjusted to the light and she saw him, hulking and huge and standing over her with a snarl on his face. “Don’t get smart with me,” he said. “I was coming down here to give you water.” His eyes were narrowed and she could see fangs in his mouth that didn’t seem like they ever retracted.

Lydia’s fear spiked a few notches, and the man grinned, but it certainly was not pleasant. There was something about the way that he smiled that reminded her of a wolf about to move in for the kill; it wasn’t happy. It was predatory. “I… I’m sorry,” she said, thinking quickly. “I didn’t mean to get defensive.” Lydia looked up at him with her eyes wide, trying to keep him placated, trying to keep him from attacking.. She had to admit, it was not a smart move to sass the person who holds her life in their hands.

He just sneered and threw something at her. Lydia turned her head to the side quickly and felt something solid connect with her right temple. It landed with a soft _thud_ into her lap, and she slowly opened one of her eyes to look down at it. A water bottle. Oh god, it was a water bottle. She grabbed it in an instant and struggled slightly with the cap, hating that it took her so long to open it but glad that it wasn’t already opened. She inspected the lid briefly for any small puncture holes before she lifted it to her lips and drank.

Never before had anything meant so much to her as this water bottle did. The water soothed her raw throat and the voices quieted, giving her a moment’s respite from the insanity that had been her mind for the past four hours. The man watched her drink, studying her and inspecting her and measuring her, almost as if he was ticking off boxes on some mental checklist. Lydia stopped drinking after a fourth of the bottle was gone, and she put the cap back on, her eyes watching him as she stared at her.  The bottle was placed next to her, so she could save it; who knew when she would get something else.

The man didn’t leave once she was done. He, instead, kept staring at her. Lydia felt a prickle run up her neck, alerting her to some sort of unknown danger, and she knew that if he wanted to do something to her it wouldn’t be hard. He could slit her throat with one claw (but she knew, deep down inside of her, that she was not going to die today and certainly not like that. No, she knew her death was coming later and she couldn’t say how but she knew it so certainly). He could do things to her that she didn’t even want to imagine.

“Where am I?” she asked, her voice less hoarse than before.

“You’re in my cellar,” he said simply, gesturing to the space around her. She wanted to say something smart in response, to berate him for his idiocy, but she stopped herself. This man had already told her once to stop being smart with him, it was obvious that he didn’t like it. That he wanted to feel powerful and superior. She let her fear win out over her annoyance and hoped that he could only smell the overwhelming fright.

“Why I am here?” she said, allowing her voice to shake and tremble.

“I need you,” he replied. Her heart started beating faster as she got closer and crouched down to her  level, looking her in the eye. She pushed herself backward, afraid of his sudden proximity. His breath was hot and smelled like beer and meat mixed with the stink of morning breath. His face, she noticed, was scarred slightly; he had evidence of long healed tears across his forehead and trailing down from his left eye. He hadn’t shaved in a few days and she felt more dirty just looking at him than she had since she got here. “You’re going to bring my son back to life.”

 

* * *

 

 

“Are you trying to tell me,” Scott said, “that you had nothing to do with this?” His eyes narrowed at Peter as he listened intently to every single beat of his heart. It wouldn’t help, it never did; Peter was too good at lying for anyone to detect, something he knew and Derek had confirmed many months ago. Natural born werewolves had an innate understanding of their body and senses that, as a relative new-born, he hadn’t quite mastered. But he listened anyway, and willed himself not to show any anger or any weakness. He didn’t want to give Peter anything that he could latch on to and manipulate for his own benefit, and it took everything in Scott not to have his eyes turn red or his nails stretch into claws.

Their conversation had been so far fruitless. Peter avoided every question with grand gestures of innocence that did nothing to prove his case but that Scott couldn’t dispute, leaving him incredibly frustrated and on the brink of anger. Peter said he didn’t know Lydia was gone and had _absolutely no idea_ where she could have ended up. He asked if Scott was sure it didn’t have something to do with little Lydia’s banshee status, and proceeded to subtly insult Scott’s abilities as an alpha multiple times in the past fifteen minutes. Scott wanted to leave, wanted to say that this was going no where and that Peter didn’t know anything, but he couldn’t shake the feeling that Peter knew. He _knew_ what had happened to Lydia, if not where she was. Because whenever Scott told him Lydia was missing, Peter hadn’t even blinked. He didn’t take more than a few seconds to process the information. He just raised his eyebrow and asked if Scott was accusing him of something.

And as much as Scott hated Peter, he knew that Peter had a soft spot for Lydia. A disgusting and manipulative spot, sure, but a small weakness all the same. So for him not to be shocked when Scott storms in and asks where she is, to not even _blink_ when Scott says that she’s gone, well. Peter has to know something. Or, somehow, Lydia being gone works out in Peter’s favor, as most things usually do.

Peter sighed almost dramatically and waved his hand. His attempts to seem innocent made him seem anything but. “That is exactly what I am trying to tell you, Sc- _ott_ ,” he said, drawing Scott’s name into two syllables and clicking his tongue so the _t_ sounded harsh to Scott’s overly sensitive ears, and examined his fingernails. “You never do listen, do you?”

There was no rise in Peter’s heartbeat, no sound to indicate that he was lying or being somehow less than truthful. There was nothing. Just the steady thump of a heart that is too secure in its own truth for its own good. “I try not to listen to you if I can help it,” Scott said, his voice low. Peter laughed as if Scott had said something cute, almost like a parent laughs at a child’s mindless babbling. Scott felt his blood boil and pressed his fingernails into the flesh of his palms, feeling the pain that kept him from getting pissed off. It was always Peter’s laugh that got him. He wasn't taking the situation seriously. Peter never did.

He took a deep breath and centered himself, pulling down on his anger and his senses, letting the primal desire to rip Peter into pieces drop further and further down until it seemed like a small, insignificant thing. He let himself be the anchor that grounded him, let his humanity keep him sane. One of the only good things to come out of the dead pool was meeting Satomi and talking with her, alpha to alpha, on living life as a werewolf. She called him rare, saying that a true alpha derived their power not from brutality but from their pack, from the desire to defend everyone. “ _You are strongest when surrounded by your friends and when you seek to protect them,_ ”she told him one night when he admitted that he thought he was weak. He lost more fights than he won and thought he did a horrible job of keeping his friends safe. “ _Unlike many werewolves who immerse themselves in their primal urges, you are defined by your humanity, Scott McCall._ ”

Scott was aware of Peter watching him closely, and trained his eyes back on Peter’s face. Peter’s grin had disappeared, leaving only the false look of concern that he donned too often these days. His arms were crossed over his chest, though, and he leaned into the wall behind him. “What would I need with Lydia, anyway? She served her purpose for me when I turned her.”

“You swear?” Scott asked. “You swear you had nothing to do with this?”

“Yes. I swear,” Peter said, rolling his eyes. “Not that you’ll believe me, anyway.”

For once, he agreed with something that came out of Peter’s mouth. If it turned out that he had nothing to do with Lydia’s disappearance, then they would all be shocked. Scott’s phone rang in his pocket, and Peter lifted his right arm and motioned, as if inviting his former beta to answer the phone. Scott suppressed the desire to roll his eyes right back at Peter, and picked up anyway.

“Scott?” Malia asked tentatively, her voice quiet. “We need to talk. Are you done with Peter?”

Scott glanced up in Peter’s direction, and felt the familiar burn of annoyance when he saw Peter’s head cocked very slightly. Of course he was listening in on the conversation. “Almost,” he replied. “Can you meet me where Kira and Liam are in about 20 minutes?” He deliberately left out the location so Peter couldn’t follow, although he knew that Peter guessed where they would be headed next and could follow him if he really wanted to. It’s not like there were too many places in Beacon Hills someone could go to track down a missing banshee.

Without another word, Scott slipped his phone into his pocket and turned to leave Peter’s apartment. He didn’t like spending more time with the man who turned him than necessary, and Peter seemed to be enjoying himself a little too much. Scott needed to know what Peter knew (because he _had_ to know something), but there was no way to get it out of him. Peter only disclosed the information that he wanted out. He only did things that benefited him.

Peter cleared his throat, drawing Scott’s attention back to him. Scott’s back still faced Peter, but his head was turned slightly. He eyed Peter with barely concealed contempt, his eyes narrowed and his face set into a soft scowl. “Scott, if there is anything I can do to help retrieve our young banshee, please let me know,” he said. “I do want to see Lydia returned safe and sound to Beacon Hills.”

The hairs on Scott’s neck stood up. “I will,” Scott said, turning again to face him. “Oh, and Peter?” Peter cocked his head to the left and raised his right eyebrow, arms still firmly crossed over his chest. Scott smiled, but the light never reached his eyes. “If I find out that you had something to do with this and you didn’t tell me, nothing you can do will save you.” His voice was low and filled with venom despite the smile on his face, and Scott’s eyes momentarily turned red as he attempted to establish dominance over the omega. Peter’s turned blue in response, a small act of defiance against someone who should be considered his superior.

“No offense, Scott, but murder isn’t really your style. Unless you’ve changed? Become the monster you’ve always feared you’d become?” Peter pushed himself from the wall and sneered. For the first time since Scott arrived, though, Peter seemed interested in the conversation. He walked toward Scott, his eyes never once leaving Scott’s face. “The monster I’d always _hoped_ you’d be?”

Involuntarily, Scott remembered the fears that nearly drove him crazy after sacrificing himself for his mother. He remembered growing out of his skin and busting through the confines he set for himself and feeling like he was surpassing something, like he was moving into territory he could never come back from. It was a fear that never left him, though it did not physically manifest itself anymore. At least, not in his conscious mind. His dreams, he thought as the images of Liam’s bloodied face flooded his brain, were a different story altogether. But Deaton had said, and Satomi confirmed, that the images he saw in his death dream weren’t the true forms of his subconscious but rather his fears and the brutal parts of himself. The vicious and easily annoyed parts of himself that he struggled with every time he spoke to Peter. Scott pressed his lips together to form a thin line, and exhaled. “You’re right, it’s not my style. But I know a few people who would gladly take me up on the offer. Especially if she doesn’t make it out alive.”

Without looking back, Scott turned and left, leaving the door wide open. For the briefest of seconds, Scott heard Peter’s heart rate increase, and Scott felt both proud and scared of himself. Peter was intrigued and mildly scared, as scared as he could be of people like Mr. Argent, Deaton, and the Sheriff. And if that was an involuntary heart rate increase... if Peter really was threatened by Scott, then he wondered what that said about him. Scott mounted his bike and took off, Malia’s worried voice and Kira’s urgent texts running through his head.

Like him, each one of them had something to report. Not only had Peter revealed a few things during their conversation, but he had talked to Mr. Argent on the way to Peter’s apartment, and successfully enlisted his help. Mr. Argent would be flying in to California tonight with a reinforcement that apparently would not be refused, and Scott knew almost immediately who would be coming. Under different circumstances, Scott would be glad to see Isaac, and while he was happy that his friend was coming back, he knew it was because of Lydia and Allison. He knew that Isaac didn’t want to see Stiles any more than Ethan did, but that he wasn’t going to let Allison’s sacrifice for her best friend be in vain. Scott told Argent to call him when they got in.

Scott pushed past the ‘Closed’ sign on Deaton’s door and stepped into his workplace. He could immediately hear the murmur of voices, meaning that Malia and Stiles were in the back with his boss, Kira, and Liam. Scott hurried to join them and find out what they knew about their missing friend. They all quieted as he entered the room, and stared at him. He felt like he walked in one some conversation he wasn’t supposed to, something he wasn’t supposed to know. Scott looked at Kira, silently asking her what was happening, but she immediately turned her eyes to the ground. What did she know that she was scared of? Deaton cleared his throat to momentarily draw Scott’s attention away from Kira, and asked what he had found out from Peter.

“She’s not in Beacon Hills anymore,” Scott said. “Peter said that he hoped she would be returned safe and sound to Beacon Hills, which means she’s not here. I think someone took her.” Scott hadn’t been deaf to Peter’s small cues, although he figured that Peter knew what information he was letting the pack have.

“Yeah, but we have to take everything that bas- Peter says with a grain of salt,” Stiles said, glancing over at Malia. She wasn’t looking at him, instead staring distractedly at the metal table. “We have to assume he knew what he was telling you, which means that it’s to his benefit that we know Lydia isn’t in Beacon Hills.”

Scott sighed. “I know,” he said. “I’ve been trying to figure out what his angle is, but it’s hard. There is no plan that I can figure out, at least not at this minute. If he knows something, he obviously wants us to find her, but not immediately. But nothing makes any sense. Why? What does he know?”

Stiles glared at the floor and heavily inhaled once, then twice through his nose. In and out and in again, before looking at Scott. “Just let me go over there,” Stiles said and ran his tongue over his lips. his eyes were glassy and eerily empty of everything but hatred. Scott had seen that look before. “I will make him tell me, I swear to God I will. And if he can’t stand anymore, then that’s what he deserves. If he can’t _breathe_ anymore, then it’s his own damn fault.” Scott crossed the short distance to his best friend’s side and looked him in the eye. Stiles blinked and then relaxed before looking off to the side. He reeked of shame and guilt and hatred.

The rest of the pack were trying their hardest not to notice Stiles. Scott looked at each one in turn, noting Kira’s eyes shifting from one point to another in rapid succession (she was trying to look anywhere but at Scott), Liam’s pale complexion and the way he kept shaking his head slowly and sadly, and Malia’s far off and distressed look. She was fidgeting and she kept running her hands over each other distractedly; she just needed something to do with her body, to be in constant motion. Scott knew the feeling. “Malia?” he asked tentatively. She looked up with a creased brow and a slight frown. Her hands tried to still themselves, but her fingers kept bouncing up and down. “What did you find out?”

She didn’t start talking for a few seconds, but then Stiles but his hand on her back and she straightened up. “You’re going to want to smell it for yourself,” she said. “Any maybe it will work better for you because you’re the alpha or because you knew her smell better than I do, but I couldn’t smell _Lydia_ anywhere, much less a foreign smell. It was only her mom. Her mom in the house, her mom in Lydia’s room, her mom very faintly in Lydia’s car. Lydia doesn’t know how to suppress her own scent, Scott. Someone took her.” Malia’s voice was firm now, convinced. She was right, Scott wanted to run through Lydia’s house himself to see if something stood out to him; wolves are better at picking up scent markers than coyotes, after all. But he figured that if Malia couldn’t smell Lydia or her assailant in the room, then Scott wouldn’t pick up much more.

“Someone very knowledgeable about the supernatural took her,” Deaton said. “An ordinary human kidnapper wouldn’t have known, and an inexperienced supernatural wouldn’t have been able to suppress the scent.”

Scott looked at him, mouth open just slightly. “What do you mean, suppress the scent?”

“Werewolves and other supernatural creatures who have long been aware of the scents that their prey leave behind have ways of reducing and erasing those same smells,” Deaton said. “And a lot of it isn’t supernatural; the people themselves make an effort to reduce their scent and then oftentimes will go back and use chemicals to erase whatever was left behind. And usually, if the chemicals have a day or so to air out, they are nearly undetectable. There is a specific kind I know of that not only eliminates odors but also dulls the sense of smell for any supernatural creature.” He walked over to a cabinet and pulled out a small canister, tossing it to Scott. “It was invented by hunters, so werewolves outside of the pack wouldn’t know there had been a brutal hunt a few days before. Not a lot of people know these exist, however. They would have to be very knowledgeable about the supernatural world.”

Scott turned the full cannister over and over again in his hands. It didn’t have a label, but just one sniff confirmed the quickly fading chemical burn. Scott sniffed the air and couldn’t detect any emotions or any scents, other than what a normal human would smell. The inhibitor chemicals worked, and if Lydia’s room was doused in this, then Scott was sure he wouldn’t find anything.

Stiles grunted and shook his head over and over again, almost like he couldn't believe it. The gears turned in his head quickly, and he glanced back at Deaton. “So, a born werewolf, basically?” He pursed his lips and then looked at Scott, indiscreetly mouthing _Peter_ to his friend.

“Not necessarily,” Deaton said. “An experienced turned wolf can also suppress their scent, and the chemical works wonders as long as no one supernatural comes by before the artificial smell fades. Also, since Lydia’s mother had a few days alone in the house, her smell would have gotten on everything and removed any small traces left behind. Theoretically, she could have even been taken by a hunter.” Scott handed Deaton the cannister and rubbed his nose, hating that his sense of smell was still a little off. The chemical was powerful. Deaton handed him back something else in a smaller container, and mimed rubbing it under his nose. The smell cleared his nose immediately, and suddenly it - and almost everything else - smelled very strongly. “I would suggest you wipe that off now. It’s not the best idea to go around sniffing inhibitor chemicals.” Scott just nodded and handed the small container back to him, slightly ashamed of his idiocy.

Stiles cleared his throat. “Outside of the scent, Lydia’s room was no help either. She…” he said, trailing off. Scott followed his eyes to the wall, and noticed Stiles swallow a lump in his throat. “She was struggling more than she let on with… with Allison and Aiden. But it didn’t look like there was a thing out of place. She didn’t put up a fight. Whoever took her, they took her while she was sleeping.”

“Or they knocked her out,” Liam said. Everyone turned to look at him, except Deaton. Stiles mouth hung open and he cocked his head to one side, holding up a finger and then thinking better of it, letting it drop to his side. Liam looked uncomfortable with the attention and rolled his shoulders before looking at Scott expectantly. “I mean, Lydia seems like the type who would realize she was being touched in her sleep and fight back.”

“And when did you become such a Lydia Martin expert?” Stiles said. “I mean, why are you even here? You barely knew her.”

“Stiles, leave him alone,” Kira said. “This isn’t some contest about who knew Lydia the best. She’s missing; we have more pressing issues to attend to. Don’t be a dick.” The last word slipped out without Kira even realizing it, and her eyes grew wide. She looked from Stiles to Scott, and then over to Malia. Stiles just stared back in surprise.

Liam snorted, a small smile playing on his lips for only a few seconds. “I may not have known Lydia for very long,” he said finally, glancing up at Stiles. “But ever since Scott bit me, she has been helping me process the supernatural world. She knows what it’s like to have all of these questions and a bunch of people who kind of forget to pay attention to you, much less give you answers. She has helped me.” He shrugged, trying to look indifferent but failing. Scott knew he cared. They all did. “I want to make sure that she is safe.”

Scott couldn’t help but feel an immense amount of pride for both his beta and his banshee; it would be just like Lydia to reach out to someone who was in need and help them. He hadn’t even realized it was going on, didn’t even know that Lydia was teaching him, but he should have expected it. She reached out to Deputy Parrish when he found out about his otherworldly abilities. And she had helped Malia assimilate into the human world by telling her about the world and high school and giving her math notes. Liam was right, she knew what it was like to be thrust head first into the supernatural world. She didn’t want anyone else to live with that burning knowledge that something was going on and no one was saying a thing.

Not like when she was attacked by Peter. Not like when he let her down before, when all of them except Allison ignored whatever was going on with Lydia, despite her obvious signs for help. She was dealing with the supernatural on her own and no one even tried to help her or tell her what was going on. He closed his eyes briefly; she had been struggling. She had needed help. And again, he ignored her. They all ignored her. Until, just like last time, the situation was too much to ignore.

“Okay, so we know that she is missing and someone took her. Someone… experienced,” Scott said. “What we don’t know is why. I think, if we can figure that out, it might help lead us to whoever took Lydia. Or at least give us something to look for.”

“Maybe they just want a banshee,” Stiles said quickly. “I mean, they don’t seem to be _that_ common, and with Meredith locked away, Lydia would be the next target.” His words came out a jumbled mess, and it was a tribute to their long lasting friendship that Scott was able to understand everything he said.

Out of the corner of his eye, Scott saw Kira and Liam look at each other, and then over to Deaton. Stiles kept talking about the various uses of a banshee and then started babbling about Lydia’s positive attributes, anything that could make her interesting to a supernatural. “Kira?” Scott asked quietly, his eyes finding hers. “What is it?”

Stiles quieted and looked over at Kira, and Malia followed suit, but Liam shifted his eyes away from the scene and looked, uncomfortably, at the floor. “I think…” she started, and then stopped. “I think we figured out why Lydia was taken.” Kira glanced over at Deaton, who nodded, encouraging her. Scott suddenly felt cold. Kira’s tone, her inability to make eye contact, the way that she was on edge; she was nervous and scared. Whatever it was, it wasn’t good.

“Banshees can be used to bring people back from the dead,” Kira said, her voice small and soft.

“We know that,” Stiles said. Kira, Liam, and Malia turned to look at him, each one shocked. “Lydia… she brought Peter back.” He looked over at Malia, whose eyebrows were scrunched together. “You knew that, remember? I told you that Peter was dead and then he wasn’t?”

Malia scoffed. “Yeah, but you didn’t tell me that she was the one who brought him back,” she said. Her shoulders lifted and sagged quickly, and she turned back to Kira. “You usually don’t mention Lydia.”

“So she’s done this before?” Kira asked. “You mean she has actually brought someone back from the dead? But… but you said…” she said, looking over at Deaton.

All eyes turned toward him. “I said that the process _usually_ kills the banshee,” he said with a small shrug. “Lydia was, and still is, a very rare girl, and the fact that she has successfully brought someone back will only make her more valuable to those who know a true banshee’s power.”

“What do you mean, to those who know?” Scott said.

Deaton paused for a few moments, and then looked to Scott. “I think you and I should have this conversation alone, Scott.”

"Oh _no_ ,” Stiles said. “Whatever you say to him, you can say to all of us. Scott is just going to tell us anyway.”

“No,” Scott said. He looked out at his pack; Kira and Liam were scared and worried, and Malia was still nervously fidgeting. They didn’t want to be here for this. They didn’t need to be here for this. Only Stiles stared back at him, hard and angry. “You guys go ahead to Stiles’ house. Regroup with Danny and Ethan, and then let Ethan run through Lydia’s room. He knows more about the supernatural than we do and might have some leads about werewolves who use this stuff. Mr. Argent will be coming in tomorrow with Isaac and should be able to help us out. And Malia, can you call Derek? I didn’t have time before seeing Peter.”

With the exception of Stiles, his pack nodded and started leaving. Malia pulled on Stiles’ arm but he slipped out of her embrace and walked over to Scott. “You can’t be serious,” he said. “Let me stay. This is Lydia we’re talking about.”

“Yeah,” Scott said, staring at Stiles. “This is Lydia we’re talking about. Our _friend._ And we are going to find her. But to do that, we need as much information as we can get and as many people as we can get looking for her. This conversation won’t happen with you here. And have you called your dad?”

Stiles ran his tongue over his teeth and looked away. “Not… not yet.”

“Do that. The more bases we cover at once, the faster we will find her. And they,” he said, motioning over to the other three, “need you back at your place. So do I.” Stiles rolled his eyes, but muttered an affirmative statement before pushing away from Scott and walking out the door. Scott caught Malia’s eye before she exited, and told her not to listen in, no matter what Stiles said. “Get him back to his house.” His voice was serious and she nodded, walking out the door to catch up with everyone else.

Scott listened intently, making sure that he heard four doors shut, two engines start and four heartbeats ride away from the clinic. He closed his eyes and concentrated, ensuring that no one was around, much less someone with supernatural hearing.

“I think we’re clear,” Scott said, looking up at Deaton.

He nodded and motioned for Scott to follow him into his actual office. The room was small but filled with books that, now that Scott actually looked at them, were either veterinarian texts or small, hand-bound editions of other books. Probably about supernatural creatures, Scott guessed. Deaton shut the door and flipped a switch before sitting down behind his desk and gesturing for Scott to do the same. “The switch makes sure that no one can hear us. It never hurts to be cautious,” he said with a smile.

They sat for a moment in silence while Deaton gathered his thoughts. Scott looked around the room, his eyes grazing over many objects but taking none of them in; he hadn’t been in here often, but his mind was too distracted to really study anything. There were a few closed cabinets that more than likely contained herbs and other powerful concoctions, since all of the medicine for the animals was kept in another room in locked containers.

Deaton cleared his throat, and Scott looked back at him, suddenly aware of the very serious look on his mentor’s face. “There are a great many details of this case that worry me,” Deaton said, looking Scott in the eye. Scott frowned. Nothing about that sentence sounded good. “If I am correct, and this person took Lydia because she is a banshee and therefore capable of resurrecting the dead, then they are only operating on half truths.”

“What do you mean?” Scott said slowly.

“In order to fully understand the danger Lydia Martin is in, you are going to need to understand exactly what a banshee is, and their history as a mythological creature,” Deaton said.

"Across cultures, there are many different mythological fortellers of death. Bean-sídhe, ciguapas, a nix, even the well-known woman in white are all different names for the mythological creatures that predict or even cause death. In Celtic mythology, these spirits, or banshees, were supposedly attached to the great old clans in Ireland, and would stay with them until the last member of the bloodline perished. Over time, the great families married out into the wider Irish population, and the banshee myth grew to encompass every family on the isle.”

Deaton reached behind him and pulled down one of the small, leather-bound books from his collection. He flipped the pages, eventually settling on one before sliding it over to Scott. Scott read it while Deaton talked, and he wondered how long Deaton had this information and kept it from them and, more importantly, from Lydia. “Like all myths, the story of the banshee was rooted heavily in reality. As you can imagine, within those major clans, there were werewolves and other supernatural creatures that often pulled together and formed packs. Instead of being attached to the family as a whole, these omen creatures are attached to the packs, much like emissaries. Usually, they join the pack of whoever awakened their abilities. And once bonded, they usually stay with the pack until either the whole pack dies or they do.”

Scott looked up from the page. The book simply described a banshee’s function and covered much of the history Deaton was telling him, anyway. “But I didn’t turn Lydia,” he said. “Does that mean Lydia is really attached to the Hale pack?”

“No,” Deaton said. “When Lydia’s powers were awakened, they were attached to Peter because Peter bit her; like you, she didn’t have a choice in the matter. He forced her to be part of his pack without her consent and then mentally abused her through his memories. I think that anchored her to his side until she resurrected him, and then she abandoned him. It wasn’t a true bond. Lydia, most likely subconsciously, made the choice to leave Peter’s pack and become part of yours. She bonded herself to you, the only other person in the world also bit by Peter Hale.”

"What about Kate Argent?”

“Simply put, Kate was scratched, not bit. Usually, since the alpha has no intention of turning that person, their loyalties are not immediately tied to the alpha. But, like Kate, they can be bonded over time to a specific person.”

Scott nodded, taking in all of this information. Small things were clicking into place; how Lydia always seemed to know when they were in danger, how the deaths she predicted could be outside of their pack but always seemed to point to a larger threat to all of them. Her senses were looking out for them in any way she knew how. She picked up on the Darrach’s victims because the Darrach was a threat to her pack. She screamed when Jennifer tried to kill her, not just to predict her own danger but also predicting the sacrifice he, Allison, and Stiles would make. She could sense Stiles’ deterioration and knew when the Nogitsune took him over. Even during the whole dead pool, she didn’t scream until Derek. It wasn’t just anyone’s death, it was only pack deaths or danger to them. She was linked to him, bonded.

He glanced up at Deaton.  “Why did you not want to rest of them to hear this? We already knew Lydia was part of my pack.”

Deaton pressed his lips into a thin line and shut the book Scott had been reading. “What I am about to tell you is information that should not be shared with the rest of your pack, under any circumstances,” Deaton said. “It is a little known fact that banshees can bring people back from the dead. About a century ago, this information became less protected, and banshees were hunted down for the sole purpose of bring back powerful creatures or beloved humans. The race was nearly wiped out. And that’s because even fewer people know that a banshee's resurrection power only works for the pack to whom they are bonded.”

Scott’s eyes widened in horror. His mouth fell open. He let out an involuntary, soft, “No.”

Deaton stopped talking, watching Scott. Scott felt the urge to cry, to scream, to hit something. Lydia was going to die. Lydia could already be dead. Scott’s head fell into his hands and he felt a hot tear trail down his cheek.

“If your pack knew,” Deaton said, and then stopped. He was choosing his words carefully. “There are some people in your pack that are more attached to each other than to Lydia,” Deaton said slowly. “If they knew, and that other person got hurt, then it’s not inconceivable that they would force Lydia to bring that other person back. And then, Lydia would die.”

Another tear followed the first. He didn’t want to admit it, but Deaton was right. If something were to happen to Stiles and Malia knew about Lydia, her first through would be using Lydia to bring him back. And if Scott knew Lydia, he didn’t think she would be at all opposed to giving up her life for Stiles. Or, at this point, any member of the pack. “Does Lydia know?” Scott asked weakly, his lower lip trembling.

“No, I didn’t tell her. Imagine what would have happened to Lydia if she knew she could have revived Allison. Either she would have, and Lydia would be dead, or she wouldn’t have gotten to her friend in time, and her grief would be many times worse. Lydia is a hero, Scott. She would give up her life for a friend.”

Scott balled his hand into a first and tried to steady himself. If they couldn’t find her, Lydia was going to die for nothing. Allison’s sacrifice would be meaningless. Her death would be in vain. No. Lydia’s life was more important at the moment than Allison’s sacrifice. Lydia was going to die for no reason whatsoever. And that, in and of itself, was more heartbreaking than Scott could put into words.

“But, she survived once. She survived Peter,” Scott said.

At some point while Scott had been staring at the ground and trying not to cry Deaton had gotten up and walked over to his side. He placed a hand on Scott’s hand, offering whatever comfort he could. “She’s rare. There are very few banshees I have ever heard of that survived a resurrection,” he said softly. “And at the time, she was technically in Peter’s pack, and he tortured her to get what he wanted. For all I know, the alpha bond along with a lack of consent was enough to save her. But for a stranger? I don’t know that Lydia would survive a second time, even for someone in your pack, much less a stranger.”

Scott closed his eyes and could only see Lydia, lying dead on some dirt floor. She looked peaceful but pale, so pale.

“I have to save her.”

 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Any feedback is highly appreciated. I want to get better. Let me know how I can be better.


	5. cut the ropes

It was dark outside. Dark enough that she should, in theory, be able to give into her immense exhaustion and sleep for a few hours until she absolutely had to wake up, but she figured there was no way that was going to happen. Lydia was gone, and had been gone for three days, and most likely would be gone for a while. They had no leads whatsoever, and it seemed like every stone they overturned added nothing to their investigation. Kira had never felt more like a teenager then she had this week; it seemed like everything was happening around them and they had no way to control it. They couldn’t have stopped Lydia from being taken, they couldn’t search, they didn’t have access to the databases and files that so many teams on crime shows could easily get into. She figured there had to be some kind of supernatural database somewhere, one that listed the supernatural criminals. And if only they had it along with an expertise on supernatural behavior, they might be able to profile the kidnapper, and find Lydia before something happened, just like they did on TV.

Kira clenched her eyes shut. Yeah, right. This wasn’t _Criminal Minds_ or _CSI_ , this was Beacon Hills. The police department consisted of one sheriff and one deputy who knew about the supernatural, and a very large percentage that was treating Lydia’s kidnapping like they would the abduction of a normal girl. When she was in the police department yesterday talking with Deputy Parrish, she had heard some of the other men call it a sexually motivated crime. “Pretty little girls like that just don’t come back,” they had said, and there was a sad murmur of agreement. “We just need to make sure it isn’t a serial rapist. Need to protect the other girls and women in the town before they meet the same end.” Parrish had very angrily told them to shut up and that Lydia would be coming home safe. And after the men left, he reiterated those words to Kira. Lydia was coming home. And she was going to be safe. She had agreed with him then, feeling so certain that Lydia would make it back alive. But now, in the darkness, Kira couldn’t help but doubt it.

It wasn’t a crime show, but it sure wasn’t a fairy tale, either. This was their life. When had things ever worked out for the best? They had survived a lot, Scott’s pack. But not all of them made it out alive. Allison hadn’t and Aiden hadn’t, which had torn Lydia apart right under their nose. Scott had told her about Erica and Boyd, about their deaths. And now, one of the pack was just gone. One of her very best friends was gone.

To think, a few months ago before the dead pool, Kira didn’t think that she and Lydia were going to get along very well. They hadn’t spent a lot of time together during Stiles’ possession; in an effort to figure out her powers and shut herself away from the voices, Lydia stayed pretty far away from the pack. Kira remembered seeing her and thinking that she was so beautiful and so strong, and she handled herself and her powers with such grace. Kira wanted to know her, wanted to see another supernatural girl in action. But Lydia turned away, and at the time Kira didn’t realize it was because she was so afraid of losing everyone important to her that she didn’t want to know anyone else. Kira didn’t know that Lydia was starting to break apart and that she couldn’t bring herself to really befriend Kira and then lose her too. But Allison died, and Kira was scared that Lydia would shut her out completely and only think of her as Scott’s pitiful replacement for Allison. But Lydia surprised her when she came to her and talked with her, helping Kira cope with Allison’s death. She reassured Kira and told her that she, too, was beautiful. And that Scott was torn up right now but he would come back. Allison meant a lot to him and he loved her and always would in a way, but that people can always come back after being broken.

 _“You have too much going for you to doubt yourself,” Lydia told her. “You are just as much his equal as Allison was, and you are your own person. He won’t compare the two of you. And if he does, I will kill him. I swear I will.”_  Kira remembered Lydia had smiled after that and given her a hug and Kira hugged her back, fiercely. She had friends before Lydia, and with Malia coming to Beacon Hills not long after that, she had friends after Lydia, too. But Lydia stood out to her. She made Kira feel accepted in small ways, even when, Kira guessed, she was hurting. Lydia was selfless. She and Scott were a lot more alike than they would ever admit or let on. Both were great leaders, both were smart, both wanted the best for other people often at the expense of themselves. They both had lost a lot of people they loved and dealt with the consequences in the best way they knew how. They both chose to be heroes. Kira wondered if she could make that choice, if any of the rest of them could.

Probably not.

She flipped over, trying to get comfortable on the bed. If only she could just find the right spot to forget about her life for a second, she might be able to get some shut eye. Her mind raced in a thousand different directions, trying to figure out exactly what they had missed or ways that they could keep going, different theories and ideas and reasons. Reasons why he could barely look at them for more than a few seconds when they talked about Lydia. Like it had for the past few months, her mind wandered to Scott and stayed there, analyzing him and imagining him. She wondered what he thought about when he thought about Lydia. If he was really as hopeful as he acted. If the secret she knew he was hiding was as bad as she thought, or if it was worse.

A small sliver of moonlight from the waxing crescent shone through her window and Kira glanced over at her clock. It was 4 in the morning: two and a half hours until her alarm went off, three hours until she got up, and three and a half hours until she drove to school, which her parents still forced her to go to every day despite the dire circumstances. In fact, they were all being forced to struggle through the seven hour school day under threat of expulsion from the principal, despite the fact that one of their friends had been declared missing just three days ago. The principal said she wanted things to continue on as normal, that while she knew it was hard for them not to help, she didn’t see what they could do that the authorities couldn’t. They were, after all, just teengers, not trained for something as dangerous as a kidnapping.

“It’s 4 in the morning,” a voice called from the corner of her room. “Shouldn’t you be asleep?”

Kira smiled slightly as she sat up and looked at Scott, who had been in the corner all night. Her parents had let him stay on the condition that he stay far, far away from her bed, and Scott readily agreed. Like she said, often looked after the needs of others at the expense of his own. “Shouldn’t you?”

With a small touch of her finger, she turned on the lamp beside her bed and illuminated the room. She saw he looked exhausted and even though he was smiling, he looked far from happy. “I’m supposed to be watching you,” he said. “I want to be sure you’re safe. We don’t know if the kidnapper just wanted Lydia.” She rolled her eyes and then stared at him, one eyebrow arched while the other lay flat. She wasn’t the one who had been nearly sleepless since Tuesday. Kira might not have slept soundly but she still slept, which is more than she could say for him.  He was wearing himself out by going to school every morning, looking for Lydia tirelessly into the night, and then staying up to watch over Kira when his mom was on shift at the hospital. There were dark half moons under his eyes that only exaggerated the lack of light a smile was supposed to send to the eyes, and Kira scooted over on her bed, patting the inviting mattress. Scott snorted and shook his head. “Your dad would kill me.”

"Honestly, it’s my mom you should watch out for,” Kira said as she got out of bed. Scott watched her with a tired amusement; he was interested but had so little energy left for her antics that he could do little more than stare. He was standing up with his arms crossed over his chest - she assumed that it was easier to stay awake that way - but she could see how his shoulders slumped against the wall and his knees barely supported his body weight. “They’re not going to mind, not really. But if it will make you feel better, I’ll sleep in my chair,” she said. Kira not so gracefully walked over to the other corner of the room, away from Scott but close to her bed, and turned to face him. She sat down in a large, comfy armchair that she kept in her room for reading and beamed up at him. “See? Fine. So comfy. I bet you’re jealous.”

Scott grinned, and walked over to her. She noted with no small amount of pleasure that he looked genuinely happy instead of just smiling to put her at ease. “Oh, I am so jealous,” he said, eyeing her. “I am very, very jealous of that chair.” He stopped in front of her and bent down, his head coming close to her own. Scott pressed his lips to hers and she melted, tipping her head up so she could kiss him back. Her lips moved against his greedily, and she felt a familiar warmth blossom in her lower torso. He was unfair. He was _so_ unfair. His lips trailed down the right side of her face down to her neck, and each place he kissed tingled for a few seconds and then a few seconds more. She felt like her electricity was congregating in the places that he left behind, trying to meet him with the same shockingly tingly feeling as she experienced.

Kira felt one of his strong, so incredibly strong arms loop around her back and she leaned back onto it as he kissed her neck again. She loved the feeling of his arms around her; talk about feeling safe and protected. And his body was so warm. “What are you doing?” she asked, her voice lower than usual. She didn’t want him to stop, of course, but this was definitely out of the ordinary. Especially with her parents not more than a few yards away from her current location.

His other arm snaked its way behind her knees, and suddenly Kira was airborne. “Hey!” she said, hitting him in the arm. “What are you doing, for real?”

“I’m not letting you sleep on a chair,” he said as he carried her to her bed with ease despite his fatigue. Half of his mouth was drawn up into one of his cute smiles when he set her on her bed, and she frowned at him. “You stay here. Close your eyes and get some rest, please?” He backed up, and his pleading eyes made her feel a little bad. He probably didn’t want to sleep when she was so obviously awake and nervous. She might have been the reason that he wasn’t sleeping, at least tonight. “ _I’ll_ sleep in the chair if it will make _you_ feel better.”

Kira sighed, and crawled under her covers. “Just promise me that you’ll get some sleep too, Scott,” she said, ending her statement with a small yawn. With another small touch, her lamp dimmed and turned off, the electricity flowing back into her body. She closed her eyes and steadied her breathing, trying her best to concentrate on him doing the same. For a few minutes, Scott was still tense and intently watching her; she could feel his eyes on her and her room. But slowly, that feeling disappeared, and she heard Scott slump even further in her chair while letting out a soft snore. She grinned to herself and relaxed. They would be no use to anyone, especially Lydia, if they could barely see straight from sleep deprivation.

Within a few hours, her eyes opened, and she saw that her clock read 6:28 a.m. Kira glanced over at Scott, and saw him peacefully sleeping, looking more relaxed than he had since Tuesday. He needed this, she told herself as she unplugged her clock to keep the alarm from going off. He needed this more than he would admit. Kira grabbed some clothes and tried to make as little noise as possible, imagining that she was playing some sort of innocent trick on her boyfriend to give him another hour or so of rest. She opened her door quietly, praying the door wouldn’t squeak, and found her dad on the other side, just about to knock.

"Kira,” he said slowly. “What is going on?”

“Dad, be quiet!” Kira whispered before jerking her head over to Scott, who was thankfully still asleep. “He hasn’t slept for more than an hour at a time in the past three days.” Her dad peeked in, judged the distance from the chair to Kira’s bed to be far enough, and then nodded. He knew, of course, that Scott had stayed over, but usually Scott left around the same time Kira’s dad woke up.

“We will give him another hour to sleep before I kick him out,” he said with a smile. “I’m making omelets for breakfast. Come downstairs when you’re ready.” Kira walked off and hoped that the pitter patter of water from the sower down the hall wouldn’t wake Scott up. “Also,” he said, almost as an afterthought, causing Kira to stop in her tracks and turn around. “Your mom will be flying out while you are at school and heading down to Los Angeles.”

She tipped her head to the side and looked at him. She didn’t remember her mom having a business meeting this weekend or anything written on the calendar. “What’s going on?”

Before her dad could answer, her mother rounded the corner from the stairs. “I think I’ve found someone who can help find Lydia,” she said.

Kira’s eyes lit up and she moved closer to her mother, her heart beating fast and the words spilling out of her mouth in rapid succession. “Who are they? What information does this person have? _What_ are they?” She wanted to contain her excitement, but this was one of the few leads they’d had in the past 3 days. Danny was looking into the chemical and lists of supernatural creatures in the area. Ethan was tapping other wolves to see if they had heard anything. Mr. Argent, who arrived late last night with Isaac in tow, was meeting with hunters and trying to figure out who was selling the inhibitor chemicals on the black market. The Sheriff had put out an APB on Lydia to no avail, though the state police were starting to get involved in the search.

But in terms of their pack, they were coming up blank. This seemed to be the one instance that the teenagers could not fight or figure their way out of the situation. They needed help. Scott had gone to Lydia’s house and found nothing that could help them out, not even one of her hairs. Whoever it was had cleaned _everything_ that could help them out. The surrounding area, two days cold, had been breezed over with other smells; Scott could pick up Lydia here and there but nothing added up to a concrete path. Stiles had been searching the woods with Malia, looking for tracks or anything else that could possibly help them. Liam trailed around where he was necessary, adding his nose and keen eyes to the mix. Kira felt nearly useless; without a great sense of smell or sharpened eyesight, she was no use in the woods.

She had, however, been researching. Stiles was supposed to help her but he was so worried about Lydia, so obviously worried about his friend that he could barely sit still. He wanted to, _needed_ to be out there doing something. Liam had been helping her sift through Deaton’s mythology books for anything that could be used to give them a timeline for Lydia’s sacrifice. She learned why druid scholars thought banshees scream and the theories surrounding their connection to the afterlife. Some said banshees, which all came out of  an ancient bloodline that had diluted through the years, had faced a near death experience at some point in their life which connected them to spirits. Others disagreed, saying that a banshee could be any human immune to the bite that had someone close to them pass. But no one knew exactly what made people immune except being some other type of supernatural. All she had found were conflicting theories and random facts that so many other mythical scholars disputed. So really, they had found nothing helpful, but she was going to search on her own during her study hall after biology. Her head hurt from doing so much research, but Kira didn’t want to feel like she was just passively waiting for Lydia to come home, for Scott and Malia to do all the work.

Her mother smiled down at her, amused by the speed of her daughter’s speech. “An old friend of mine has dealt with something like this in the past,” Noshiko said. “I hope that she will be able to point us in some direction.”

“An old friend?” Kira asked. “It’s not Satomi, is it?”

“Kira, I have been alive for over 900 years,” her mother said dryly. “I know supernatural creatures other than Satomi Ito.”

Kira blanched, embarrassment spreading through her veins. When her mother looked like any other 40 some year old woman, it was easy to forget that she lived through most of modern history. It was also easy for Kira to forget that she too could live that long, or somewhere close to it. Her mother had confirmed that supernatural creatures like werewolves and werecoyotes tended to live longer and age far, far less than the average human. But kitsunes aged even _less_ , and lived _much_ longer. She didn’t want to think about outliving her friends, not now, not when Lydia’s life was on the line. “Right.”

Her mother cupped a hand under Kira’s chin and lifted her daughter’s face to look into her eyes. “We will find her before anything can happen,” she said quietly. “Your friend will make it out alive.”

A small, almost pitiful noise escaped her throat, but Kira said nothing. Her mother frowned and reached out, but Kira shook her head and moved out of her mother’s range; something dark settled in her stomach, a worry from the night before. She turned away from her mother and walked down the stairs, feeling somehow worse than when she went to sleep that morning. It was hard to continually be optimistic; she had done the research on regular human kidnappings. The longer the person was missing, the greater the chance that they were dead. She knew that the first 48 hours were imperative, and for almost that amount of time they didn’t even know Lydia was missing. Those guys at the station, they didn’t seem hopeful, and she was starting to agree with them. Everyone was running on some belief that everything would turn out alright, but she knew it wore on all of them. And without a banshee, they wouldn’t be able to tell if she was gone.

Her father was in the kitchen, setting her favorite omelette on a plate. “You don’t look so good,” he said. Again, Kira said nothing and started eating, silence filling the kitchen. She didn’t want to go to school today. It felt so useless, sitting in class and listening to people talk about things that weren’t going to help them. She didn’t want to hear another lecture on different tree types in California and what grew where in this huge freaking state. And sitting in math to keep completing problem sets over and over again? She knew what she was doing, but no thank you. Even her father’s class, where he desperately tried to make things easier for them or tried to find relevant lessons, was aggravating. She knew that Scott, Malia, and Stiles felt the same way, but they, like her, were being forced to attend. Stiles had said something about skipping today to meet up with Argent and possibly head up to Eichen House with Deaton to see if Meredith could help them, but Kira knew she wouldn’t be following Stiles’ lead.

She was going to dutifully sit in class while he and Isaac and Danny and Ethan searched for Lydia. She was going to take notes and give them out to her distracted friends because she knew they weren’t paying attention, and someone had to fill one of Lydia’s roles in the pack. The least she could do was this. But man, what she wouldn’t give to be out there with everyone else during school. What she wouldn’t give to be able to drop out like they had for a little bit, be “homeschooled” for a little while.

“Is she always like this or has she gone deaf?”

Kira jerked her head up and found herself looking at Ethan, who raised both of his eyebrows at her. “What are you doing here?” she said.

He shrugged, and then glanced over at her father. “I came here to find Scott,” he said uncertainly. “His mom said…” he trailed off, her voice lowering with every word. She just stared at him, wondering why he seemed on edge. Her father knew about supernatural stuff, and Ethan knew that. So why would he be avoiding the… oh.

Duh! “Um, it’s okay. My parents know Scott is here. It’s not a secret,” she said.

Ethan looked over at her dad again, and then shrugged. “Alright. So he is here? I need to talk to him.”

“He’s asleep,” she said quickly. “And trust me, he needs it. Like, a lot. But if it’s something about Lydia, you can tell me.”

Ethan paused for a second. Her father motioned to the seat in front of Kira at their breakfast table, and then pointed back to the pan. “I’ll make you one, Ethan. I’m sure you haven’t eaten in a while.”

He smiled slightly, taking the seat that was offered to him. “Thank you, Mr. Yukimura,” Ethan said. “You’re right, I haven’t eaten since yesterday… morning, I think.” Her father just smiled and got started on the second omelette, taking care to fill it with generous helpings of ham, cheese, spinach, and tomatoes. A glass of orange juice found it’s way in front of Ethan, and he thanked her mother as well.

Kira gave him a few seconds to compose himself while she took another bite of her food. “So,” she said once she swallowed, “what did you find? What do you know?”

“Danny finally got in contact with a friend of his father’s, who is the alpha of a pack up in Portland. We had been asking around a few packs up and down the West Coast, but everyone we talked to was more amazed that we knew a living banshee; most hadn’t met one in their lives,” he said.

Her mother nodded. “There was a mass extermination a century or so ago,” she said when Ethan gave her a confused look. “Banshees weren’t commonplace before that, but afterward… The balance was greatly disturbed, and so few banshees have appeared since then. I had thought them extinct for a long time, but they have slowly come back. I was shocked that there were two in Beacon Hills County, but with a nemeton here. I guess that is all the explanation I will get.”

Ethan just nodded, taking it all in. Kira hadn’t know that banshees were such uncommon creatures; she had assumed, since she personally knew two of them, that they were far more commonplace than kitsunes. What was it that Deaton had told her? _Lydia is a rare girl, indeed_.

“Well, this werewolf, she had a banshee in her pack. At first, she was suspicious that we were asking about it, but once Danny told her what had happened, well, then she started talking,” he said. Her father set down the omelette in front of Ethan, and he took a bite, his expression pained. “A man had be asking around for banshees, like we were. Promised a favor in return for the deliverance of a living banshee. She had refused him and hadn’t heard from him since. But I think it’s the same guy. And someone, someone who knew about Lydia, told him where to find her and when to grab her.”

Kira was too dumbfounded to speak. Ethan was angry; it didn’t even take a werewolf’s sense of smell for her to know that he was pissed off. He was staring off over her shoulder, glaring at some unknown spot past the kitchen doorway. She wanted to say something, but she couldn’t; Lydia was taken by a man who was actively searching for banshees. They had guessed that and operated under the assumption that she had been taken for this reason, but to hear it said out loud hurt. And to know that someone, someone in this town had sold her out.

“That must have been what Peter was hiding.” Kira whipped around in her seat and saw Scott standing in the doorway, right where Ethan’s eyes led. He was just as angry, if not more so. “He knew. He knew some crazed freak had taken her and he didn’t say anything.” Scott’s footsteps echoed heavily across the tile floor. Kira ate the last of her omelette and Ethan did the same, both of them sensing what was going to happen next. “Let’s go pay Peter a visit.”

The two of them got up, but Kira’s mother stopped her before she could leave. “You’ll want this,” she said, handing her daughter her katana. “And don’t forget to make it to school on time. Or call us if you can’t.” She nodded and took the sword, following her boyfriend and friend out to confront a psychopath.

Two bikes were waiting for her, and Scott threw a helmet to her outstretched hand as she walked up.

“Should we call Stiles?” she asked tentatively as they took off toward the place Peter had lived since he talked his way into a trial and out of Eichen house last month.

Scott shook his head. “Stiles will only make this harder,” Scott said vaguely, and Kira shrugged off his answer. If Peter did know something about Lydia, and he was keeping it a secret… she was sure that Malia wouldn’t mind it if he had a few cuts on his body. She glanced over at Ethan, and then frowned to herself. Peter probably wouldn’t make it out alive, much less with a few cuts.

The drive was silent and strangely far too quick. Kira’s blood pounded in her ears and she felt electricity sparkle and tingle beneath her skin. She was slowly learning how to fight and utilize this power, but it was difficult; she had to concentrate to bring it out and wield it, and oftentimes in battle she wasn’t able to take a deep breath and summon it like she was in the training with her mother. They pulled up to Peter’s building, and Kira glanced around, and then as she heard Ethan growl and Scott yell, she saw it.

“Go check his apartment, go!” Scott yelled and Ethan took off. Peter’s car was gone. Scott kept sniffing the air, and she knew that he was trying to find any trace of scent. There was a loud crash but Scott ignored it, his eyes startlingly red as he looked around. His incisors grew and fangs took shape, and Kira gripped his arm hard to keep him from fully wolfing out.

"Scott, she whispered, and he looked at her, blinking rapidly until his claws and fangs retracted. His eyes, though, remained, and she wondered if his could see traces of Peter like he could see her aura too.

“He’s not up here!” Ethan shouted from the balcony outside Peter’s place.

Scott slammed his fist into his open palm and cursed briefly. “How could I not have been watching him? I knew there was something suspicious and I didn’t even _think_ to monitor his _place_.”

“Hey,” Kira said, “don’t blame yourself. We’ve been looking for Lydia. We wouldn’t have wanted to waste the manpower to watch over his place. We needed everyone out looking for her. And we will find her, Scott,” she said, trying her hardest to believe it too. “We will find her before it’s too late.”

Scott stared at the ground for a few seconds, and Kira got the eery feeling that he was hiding something again. That there was something right under the surface that he wanted to let out but that he couldn’t say out loud, at least not yet. He pulled out his phone and started dialing, and then turned to Kira. “Can you call Malia? I need them to meet us at the school.”

Kira nodded as Ethan walked up, looking between them. School would be starting in another 45 minutes, and it would take them at least 15 to get back to Beacon Hills High.

Malia groggily picked up on the second ring, and said she would meet them at the school, right near the sign at 7:30. Kira hear Scott say 7:30 to someone else, and then he, too, hung up the phone. Scott looked at Ethan, who was standing awkwardly near his bike. Scott told him to come on, and again they took off, nature blurring by as she, Scott, and Ethan raced toward Beacon Hills high school.

When they got there, Isaac was standing next to Danny, and both of them were just far enough away from Stiles and Malia for it to be noticeably awkward. Malia stood with her arms crossed over her chest, turned slightly away from Stiles. Isaac kept shooting glares at Stiles, but Stiles was staring obliviously out at the school and the high school students already assembled there. Liam stood in the middle, but kept slowly inching closer to Malia and father away from Isaac’s piercing glares. Ethan went over to stand near Danny as Kira and Scott walked up to their friends, and all eyes immediately focused on their alpha.

“Peter’s gone,” Scott said simply, and Stiles immediately gripped his hair and screwed his face up.

“What the fuck? What the _actual fuck_? We just let him go?” Stiles asked, his anger lashing out at everyone assembled. Malia turned further away from him, obviously disgusted but his outburst. Everyone else just listened to him and started, wondering what the hell was stuck up his ass. But Kira, she kept her eyes on Malia. Something was up, she could tell.

Everyone was quiet as Stiles got himself under control. Malia took a step away from him. She looked directly at Kira and rolled her eyes, and then tapped her middle finger twice on her upper arm. Code for _we need to talk soon_. Kira nodded. She wondered if they had gotten in a fight or if something else was bothering her best friend. She wondered if Stiles had been lashing out at Malia as well; he seemed really frustrated about everything that was happening, and certainly liable to blame Malia for some kind of failure. Or just complain an awful lot about it. But then Kira wondered if it was something else, something to do with the way that Stiles' eyes once used to always find Lydia in a crowd. Because Malia had told her, on nights that they spent locked up in her room just talking, that she sometimes wondered if Stiles still cared about Lydia. Both Malia and Kira knew that Stiles cared so much about Malia, but both of them couldn't help but wonder about other things. And so as she stood there, watching her best friend turn away from Stiles and watching him silently fume about Lydia being gone, Kira questioned if his anger had something to do with his heart as well as the situation. 

“We didn’t let him do anything,” Scott said.

Stiles’ snorted. “Like hell we didn’t,” he said. “We should have been watching him. You said yourself that he was hiding something.”

“And who would have been watching him?” Ethan asked. “If you remember, we were all doing our part to look for Lydia.”

“Some of us more than others,” Stiles said, and his gaze dropped onto Kira. “You could have been watching him, you know. It’s not like you were doing anything else.”

Scott stepped forward just as Malia spun around to look at Stiles. “That was uncalled for,” they both said at almost the same time. Malia gripped Stiles’ arm and turned him to look her in the eye. “Don’t say something like that, alright?” Stiles pulled his hand away and she dropped it, her face softer than it had been. She lifted her hand and held it out, and in a few seconds Stiles took it and squeezed.

“You’re just frustrated that you haven’t found anything,” Isaac said. “Kira has been researching. From what I’ve been told, she has been doing something. You have been mindlessly wandering the woods, relying on your girlfriend and trying to track footprints. Which, I might add, you have no training for. Chris was afraid you would have messed up the trail if the guy had actually left one.”

Malia turned to Isaac and cocked her head. “Also uncalled for,” she said.

“Look,” Scott said, and everyone turned back to him. “There are a lot of valid criticisms that can be made, but it won’t do us any good to turn on each other. If we’re going to find Lydia before it’s too late, we have to work together. We aren’t here for each other, we’re here for Lydia. All of us.”

Isaac opened his mouth but then shut it, choosing instead to look at the ground. Kira watched as Stiles and Ethan, too, let a shuddering breath of anger go and float up into the sky. She knew that Isaac and Ethan were not fond of Stiles, and that they both could barely stand to see him after the nogitsune. She couldn’t blame them; Ethan had lost his brother and Isaac had never really like Stiles, so losing Allison gave him all the reason he needed to cut Stiles out of his life. But to see the two of them united in more than just their desire to find Lydia was crazy. She remembered the fight that she helped Allison break up between Ethan, Isaac, and Aiden.

Scott was right, they were all here for Lydia. And being reminded of that made Isaac stop glaring at Stiles, made Ethan relax his scowl into a sad frown. Scott nodded at Danny, and he cleared his throat. “So, Ethan and I think we found another pack that met our kidnapper,” he said. “He was looking for banshees in return for any favor. I spoke to their alpha, and she said she remembered him as being old, looking about 50 in human years, but still very strong. He had an accent that was muted, like he wasn’t born or raised around here but had moved here some time ago. And he, too, was an alpha.”

“Did he say what he wanted a banshee for?” Liam asked, his voice quiet.

Danny smiled at him, but shook his head. “Nope, only that he wanted one. He evaded all of her questions that tried to get at a reason before deducing she wasn’t going to give up the location of her banshee willingly. He left her alone after that. He said he wanted a banshee before Halloween.”

“We think that Peter gave up Lydia’s location for that favor,” Scott said. He glanced around, his eyes making contact with random people’s instead of his own pack that stood before him. His secret was on the tip of his tongue, she could almost see it. She wondered how much it weighed on him to keep holding it in. If it would help them find her, why wouldn’t he say it? “And so he sacrificed Lydia for his own gain.”

Her mind backtracked, and she fully took in exactly what Danny had said. This man, he wanted a banshee before October 31. Why did that sound so familiar to her? Why was it so important? She wished that Lydia was there with her; she could recall almost everything that she read easily. Lydia would have been able to spout out the connection softly, waiting for other people to make the connections she had made in seconds.

“If she’s not already gone, she probably doesn’t have much time,” Isaac said sadly. “If he’s been looking for a banshee for a long time, he is probably desperate to do what he needs to with her.”

Ethan muttered something in agreement, and he and Isaac made eye contact. Isaac nodded sadly at his fellow werewolf. Scott and Liam, also having heard Ethan, frowned more deeply than before. Kira wished that she would hurry up and develop heightened senses, if that was a kitsune power. Maybe heightened senses could give her a better memory, and she would actually recall what it was about October 31 that was setting off alarms in her head.

“Why does everyone sound like they’ve already given up?” Malia asked, her voice harsh. She was just loud and angry enough that everyone looked up at her. “Lydia needs us to have hope. She needs us to find her. And I don’t know about you, but I plan to do it.”

“Yeah, but-” Liam started, staring up at Malia with sad eyes, looking more like a hurt puppy than a teenaged boy.

Malia snorted dismissively. “No buts. I lived in the wild for 8 years and you guys saved me. Lydia is smart and strong, in her own way. If anyone can survive being kidnapped, it’s the girl who is immune to the bite and brought someone back to life the spring before last.” Everyone but Kira and Danny stared at her with jaws slightly open. “I believe in Lydia. And like Scott said, we’re all here for her. So you all should start acting like you do, too.”

As soon as Malia mentioned bringing someone back to life, Kira pictured the book that she had read, the word standing in bold. “He’s waiting for Samhain,” she gasped, and then looked over at Scott. “He’s waiting for Samhain!”

“Sow-in?” Stiles said slowly, his eyebrow quirked. “What is sow-in?”

“No, Samhain. It’s an ancient Gaelic festival, thought to be one of the origins of the modern Halloween,” she said; her voice came out a muddled rush. Things were starting to click into place for her, and she could feel no small amount of hope rising in her chest. They had time. They had time.

“It’s a harvest festival that takes place from October 31 to November 1 in Ireland. It’s one of the times where fairies and spirits, like banshees, were thought to easily roam the earth, and so people would dress up in costumes to disguise themselves from the creatures from the otherworld. Not only that, but the dead would come back to visit their homes, and feasts were even prepared to beckon them back to their families. In that way, it is kind of like Dia de Muertos in Mexican culture, but the Irish took it further. It’s kind of like a festival of death and rebirth.”

She paused and looked around at everyone. Except for Danny, they were all staring at her with looks of confusion on their faces, and she frowned. How did they not get it? Is this what Lydia felt like all the time when she said things? “So, if someone wanted to bring someone back to life using a mythical spirit associated with death, and wanted her before October 31, chances are they are waiting for samhain. They’re waiting for the time with the Irish thought the otherworld was most closely attached to ours.”

Kira watched with a sense of hope and excitement as everyone else’s face brightened, too. Scott grinned and put his arm around her, enveloping her in a hug. “We have time!” he whispered in her ear, both excited and relieved. “We have a month. We can find her.”

Kira glanced over at Stiles and Malia, and saw a tear roll down Stiles face as he, too, smiled. “God, Kira, you’re better at researching than I am,” he said, and although she knew it was an exaggeration, she took the compliment and the apology.

“So we have until the end of October,” Danny said, “and our only lead has vanished into thin air. Someone needs to call Derek.”

Scott shrugged. “We’ve been trying to get in contact with him since Tuesday, but his phone hasn’t been on. He’s probably off with Braeden doing something, and we don’t have her number.”

“Yeah we do,” Isaac said. Everyone turned to him, and he looked around, confused. “I have it.” Scott cocked his head to the side and eyed Isaac. “Dude, she saved my life and she’s hot. I couldn't not get her number.”

“Call her,” Stiles said. “Call her and ask for Derek. He’ll be able to find Peter.”

Scott moved over to talk to Ethan and Danny about something else. Kira wanted to talk to Malia, but as soon as Scott left, Liam walked over with a small smile on his face. “Our research finally paid off,” he said.

She smiled at him, too. She felt lighter, and she figured, by the way that everyone stood a little taller and looked a lot less disturbed, they all felt it, too. There was hope. Lydia would make it back to them. Now, Malia wasn’t the only optimist in the group. “Yeah, it did,” she said. “See? Hitting the books can be a good thing.”

Liam laughed. “Well, since Lydia is pretty much always doing it, I guess it is,” he said.

Their conversation trailed off and both of them turned to watch everyone else. Stiles still looked worried but he was less tense than he had been this morning. Scott’s shoulders still drew tightly together, a sign of his stress and worry. But she knew her theory relieved him, and he would put on the smile and the relaxed tone to set his pack at ease. Ethan and Danny kept glancing at each other as they talked to Scott about something that she couldn’t hear, neither one looking particularly relaxed or stressed.

Isaac announced that he had contacted Derek through Braeden, and that Derek was setting off to find Peter tonight. They were going to get Peter back. And with Peter, she hoped, would come Lydia.

Things started, at least for now, to look up.

 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> No Lydia, sad. Much Kira, though. Happy! I like Kira! However, I think I haven't found Kira's voice yet. So if it seems choppy and disorganized, I apologize. 
> 
> Criticisms, if constructive, are always welcome and wanted. Let me know what you like and hated.
> 
> ALSO, if you're wondering, Samhain is pronounced saun, or, as Stiles says, sow-in. It's one of four seasonal Irish festivals. If you like poetry, and you like Halloween, there is a pretty neat poem by Irish poet John Montague about Samhain (called Samhain; it's a section from a larger poem/collection, "Ó Riada’s Farewell"). I have a lot of information about Samhain and will be digging into it more as the story progresses.


	6. and let me fall

She had come to hate the sound of footsteps echoing above her head. She wanted to drown the sound out and go back to sleep, but even her thoughts, jumbled from whatever sleep she had or had not gotten, would not be silent. And the more the feet above her hit the ground, the louder her thoughts were. She really, really despised those footsteps.

Before (and she could not remember how long she had been in here; she wanted to say a week or so but it was hard to tell when everything was dark and she was barely eating and her head pounded with voices that she didn't know whispering words at her. Had it just been a few days since she had last seen them? Had it been a month since she was wrenched away from her friends?) - before, the sound of footsteps made her perk up. It could be them, she thought. It could be Scott and _Stiles_ and they finally found her. She yelled up at the noise, trying to draw their attention down to her location. She wanted to be saved. She hoped she would.

But now, now she realized that the footsteps were not those of her pack coming to rescue her at long last. Now, footsteps always meant that, sooner or later, _he_ was going to follow. Soon, she would hear the creak of the doors and be blinded by the light flooding the cellar, illuminating the filth that surrounded her and burning it into her mind. She would be reminded that she was nothing, that her life was worth less than a rat’s life, except for the one thing he could do for her. She was nothing, he told her, surrounded by dirt, decay, and human waste. Once her captor understood that her friends were not coming for her, would not, _could not_ find her, he started moving around more. Started walking down the steps and staring at her, taunting her. He became brazen, confident, mocking.

Her thoughts became less frenzied; the fuzzy edges and slick memories of the state in between dreaming and wakefulness faded away. She was thinking more clearly now, and as she let her head rest against the roots of the tree, she felt slightly reinvigorated. There was something about feeling something else living next to you, she guessed, that made you think a little clearer. She couldn’t prove it scientifically, but she guessed that hikers and campers felt the same way situated against nature. Only, they were free to walk around and she was trapped, finding her clarity where she could get it.

Lydia tried to tune out the sound of _his_ feet hitting heavily against his creaking wooden floor. She was curled up against the roots of the tree, a space she now designated as her bed. The roots were surprisingly more comfortable than just lying down on the dirt, and somehow, sectioning off parts of the very small area in which she could move made her feel more in control. This was her bedroom, she decided. Over there was the bathroom. And the section of dirt there, that was her living room. At least until he killed her. Until he had no more use for her.

The footsteps left the wooden floor and she couldn’t hear them for a minute or so. Instead of falling asleep, she pulled herself off of the roots and crawled, careful not to land too harshly on the infected scratches on her knees she had sustained from thrashing around one night. She didn’t want to think about the red, slightly swollen cuts around her knees that threatened to rip open again. A few inches from her bed, Lydia sat with her face down and ears alert, waiting for the now familiar creak from above that would signify his arrival.

She barely winced seconds later when it happened. The noise was no longer loud to her sensitive ears but her hands started to shake and she bit down, hard, on her lip to keep herself from whimpering. She didn’t know what to expect, today. There were a few times he had been almost nice to her, but most of the time he laughed, he got right down in her face and touched her chin and told her all about how the only thing she was going to be good for was bringing a worthwhile creature back to life. _Yeah right_ , she thought. The only creature she’d brought back was Peter Hale, and he was not worthwhile. No, she wished he was still dead, buried deep beneath the dirt like she was now. Barely living. That is what he deserved, after everything he had done and everything he had caused. It was his fault that Scott was turned, his fault she could hear the dead.

The cellar lit up, and she could see the scratches all over her wrists from where she had tried to rip off the cuffs in moments of delirious desperation; he barely let her eat (and she wondered how she was still alive with so little food, but she felt like there was something else sustaining her, keeping her here, protecting her). His feet hit the stairs (one heavier than the other, she had noticed days ago; he must have a limp) and she lifted her head. He was watching her, amused by something she couldn’t quite understand. The man, she knew, was a sadist, but for right now she was important. So she wouldn’t die. Not now.

“Good mornin’, sweetheart,” he said, squatting down to be closer to her face. Lydia turned away from him and concentrated on the human waste only a few feet from her current location. He slipped a hand under her jaw, letting his claws skim the soft skin, and jerked her face toward him. “I said, good mornin’.”

“Good morning,” she said brusquely.

“Did you sleep well?” he asked her, almost sincerely. She eyed him, taking note of the smirk on his face, the perpetual fangs in his mouth. He was proud to be a werewolf. She guessed that if she were to see the color of his eyes, they would be red. He seemed like an alpha, dominant and overpowering, ready to kill at a moment’s notice. He was stronger than Peter had been as an alpha, more vicious in a brutal way. Peter was malicious, he could kill. Peter enjoyed killing. But this man… this man, she guessed, adored it. Needed it. Needed the release of torturing his victims and watching them die. Sexual sadism. His grin grew deeper and turned into a sneer. “I could hear you callin’ out for someone all night long,” he said. Her eyes widened. She didn’t realize she was still talking in her sleep. She couldn’t remember exactly what she had dreamed last night, once he said it, her skin went cold. It must have been the same dream she had been having on and off for the past week, the one that made her cry and worry and god knows what else. “Howlin’ like a little wolf yourself, screaming out the name Scott.”

Lydia’s eyes closed involuntarily, and she held them shut to keep herself from crying again. Her lips formed a thin line and she ran her tongue over her inturned lips. Her breathing was deep and labored but still, strangely, shallow; Lydia felt like she couldn’t fill up her lungs, like there wasn’t enough air getting to her.

“I don’t think your little Scotty is gonna come for you, sweetheart. You’re all alone out here. No one cares about you. If they did, you’d be found by now!” he said, his voice mocking and low. “They’re probably grateful you’re gone!” He laughed, and her eyes sprang open.

“They know I’m here,” she said, pissed and thinking quickly. “You think I called his name out by accident? They’re coming for me. They’re close. I’m a banshee. I can sense my own pack.” She was lying through her teeth; while she was sure that they had finally noticed her missing (or at least, her mother would have noticed something by now and reported it, meaning the Sheriff and Jordan knew, and if they knew, then Scott and Stiles knew), she didn’t know if they were looking for her or if they were looking in the right place. She thought that they would have contacted Meredith by now, and since the voices in her head were getting louder and stronger each day, she thought she would have been able to hear the other banshee. What was the use of dying, of getting closer to the otherworld, if she couldn’t even be found at greater distances?

She had said something similar to this a few days ago, when he had told her that after she brought his son back to life, they’d go kill her pack first, starting with the boy who stood next to her in the picture she had sitting on her nightstand and moving onward and upward, saving her alpha for last. He pulled out the photograph and showed it to her, pointing out each and every person, detailing how he would kill them. It was an old photo, one of her, Stiles, Allison, Scott, and Isaac, but the threat remained. He had enraged her then, too, by threatening Stiles and Scott, and she tried to lash out at him. Raised her hands as far as they would go and lunged, her face dangerously close to his arm. She screamed at him to shut up, shut up, shoe would never help him. He had nearly crushed her wrist then and there.

The threat went unnoticed, and the man just smiled. “If they were comin’ for you, they’d’ve been here already.”

Lydia turned away and stared at the far wall. He was right. She had given up hope a few days ago that they would come, but she was still protective of her pack. She didn't doubt they were looking for her, but she knew enough, having studied him over the few hours that he had been down with her, to know that they would not find her unless someone could tell them where to look.  “What do you want from me today,” she said rather than asked, her voice flat.

She tensed up as he got closer to her and his arms snaked their way around her back. She opened her mouth slightly, calculating how much force she would need to bite down on his neck and into his carotid artery. His neck was thick and just slightly out of her reach, but god help her if he started trying to touch her, to _fuck_ her, she would do it. Even if it meant she would drown in his blood.

But he didn’t do anything. He paused for a few seconds, and then Lydia heard the rustle of her chains, and he quickly backed away with the end of her bonds in one hand. “It’s your lucky day, sweetheart,” he said. “You’re gettin’ a shower.”

He yanked up on the chains and Lydia’s body was pulled upward neck and wrists first. Her legs, which hadn’t stood in over a week, burned with the sensation of blood flow and felt weak even under her greatly reduced weight. Her head spun and her body felt so fragile, so useless. He pulled her, her body barely able to support itself. “I’m not gonna carry you, girl, so you better start moving,” he said, glaring back at her with his incisors visible. She summoned every ounce of strength she had, and Lydia walked out of the cellar with her head held high. She wasn’t going to let him fucking break her.

Lydia’s strides were nowhere near as long as his; she guessed he had to be about six feet, two inches, and so it was hard for her to keep up as they walked up the stairs and into the world. Instead of watching her, he watched everywhere else, presumably making sure that no one could see them. And she doubted they could. His house, a cabin made of thick logs, was on her right as she came out of the cellar, and to her left was a tree so large that the only thing she had seen that could mirror it’s size was the nemeton’s stump. Branches sprung out all over the tree, it’s massive trunk growing impressively tall. But Lydia looked a little closer, examining the trunk; it looked like multiple trunks had grown together or grown into the ground from the original tree. The foliage was distinct, and she could have sworn that she had learned about this kind of tree in a biology class some time ago.

She squinted at it as she was pulled along. It was of the taxus genus, she surmised, by the way it grew and the foliage. And, assuming she was still in the United States, it was probably a _taxus brevifolia_ ; a rare species, indeed, but at least, unlike the _taxus masonii_ , it was not extinct. But then again, it could have been a _taxus baccata_ , somehow brought from Europe centuries ago and grown with the help of druids and the supernatural in the United States. But she wondered, looking at its size, if it didn’t have supernatural help anyway, regardless of its species.

The man stopped moving and Lydia turned away from the yew tree to look at him. In front of her was an opening to a barely walled off area; it looked like a shower inside a pool house, or even worse, on inside a school locker room. The feeling of privacy without actually having any, she thought, estimating the gaps under the walls to be about a foot and a half. And not only was it the least private shower she had ever put herself under, it was also outside. Showering outside in the Pacific Northwest and then going back to that cellar was sure to give her a cold and possibly kill her.

He pulled her inside of the opening and turned on the shower. “Go ahead,” he said, and turned his back. “I’m not gonna look. In fact,” he said as he hung up the end of her chain on a cook and crushed them together so she wouldn’t be able to pry it apart but he would. “In fact, I’m not even gonna be here.” He left her and she watched him walk away and head into her cellar. She turned back to the water, and noticed a towel and fresh clothes on a shelf within her reach but outside of the water’s spray, and then spotted shampoo, conditioner, and soap on another shelf.

Lydia inspected each item from a distance suspiciously. What was he doing, allowing her these luxuries? From everything that she had seen, he didn’t care about her; he only wanted her for her banshee abilities. But then, maybe, his werewolf senses were tired of her constant smells and body odor. Lydia stuck a hand into the water, and watched dirt fall away from her skin, and she decided she didn’t want to figure out his motives for this. She just wanted to get clean. She ducked under the water and felt it run over her skin, washing away dirt and dust that had nearly dyed her skin orange and brown. She picked up the soap and scrubbed cautiously on her hand; if something were wrong with it, she could stand to lose a few fingers. But nothing happened, no reaction or stinging, except where the soap touched a cut that desperately needed to be cleaned.

And so she worked, scraping away what she could and scrubbing at her cuts and the dirt. She washed her hair with cheap shampoo and loved it, almost relishing in getting rid of the grease that had built up around her scalp. Anytime she started forgetting where she was, though, or her situation, even for a second of pure enjoyment at this basic human necessity, she could feel the manacle around her wrists. When she tried to wash the dirt from between her toes, she found the chains restricted her from bending over and bringing her hands that far down. She was still a prisoner, she thought, still the captive of a sadist.

Lydia’s enjoyment of her shower was cut short when the water stopped abruptly. Luckily, she had finished washing the shampoo and conditioner out of her hair and was just standing in the stream, trying to drink as much as she could. She grabbed the towel and dried herself, forcefully rubbing the towel over her head to try and get as much water out of her hair as possible. She took down underwear from the shelf first, and noticed that they were most definitely her clothes; he had been in her room long enough to identify the most important picture to her and grab countless amounts of her clothing. She hoped that Stiles or Kira, whichever one was more familiar with her wardrobe, would notice they were missing, would know that he had been in there touching things and could look for prints or hairs. He would have wiped down the initial surfaces if he was smart, and she knew he was, but he might not even have thought of prints inside her drawers.

Then again, she thought as she took down the clothes, they probably had never seen her wear these. It was an old pair of jeans and a t-shirt she hadn’t worn since middle school. They were not her favorites, and were only kept around because she was too preoccupied with other things to go through her clothes and donate them. He had been smart to take from the back of her closet and the bottom of her drawers. No one would notice these clothes missing and wouldn’t think to look for clues down there.

“Alright, girl,” he said, and she turned to look at him, wearing her fresh clothes. He picked up her old sleepwear and threw it into a plastic bag before breaking the hook and grabbing the chains once more. He pulled her along, barefoot, back to her cellar, and as she walked she stared at the yew tree again.

“Old Yew,” she said quietly, reciting from memory, “which graspest at the stones.” _How appropriate,_ she thought. How appropriate that she felt most at ease among the roots that, according to the poem, wrapt around the bones.

He pulled her past the tree and back down the stairs with ease, and she followed him. If she died down here, at least someone would be able to put _In Memoriam ‘L.M.’_ on her gravestone. Or maybe they would carve it into the yew itself, if they ever found her bones among the roots. She descended the stairs after him and noticed, quickly, the lack of smell emanating from it. She looked around, for once her eyes not used to the darkness but quickly adjusting. “You cleaned,” she stated, almost amazed.

“I need you alive to bring him back,” he said. “And you won’t be alive if you die of infected wounds or surrounded by your own feces.” Shame burned on her face for a hot second.

She glared at him as he yanked her into place, and she noticed how much shorter her bonds felt now that she was safely hooked back in her cellar. She assumed the chains were a few feet longer than he allowed her down here, that he purposefully shortened them so she had nearly no mobility. Lydia collapsed onto the ground as the metal pulled her down, further down, until she could no longer stand. Her legs, which had been screaming in pain from the effort of walking and standing for ten minutes in a shower, gratefully situated themselves underneath her, glad to no longer be moving. He pushed a warm bowl of soup toward her and told her to eat, that he would collect the bowl later. She looked down at it and then looked back up at his retreating figure, hating herself for how grateful she felt toward him. Hating him for being nice. She wanted to throw it across the room, shove his supposed kindness right back at him. He couldn’t manipulate her, not like this. She was stronger. She would break _him._

Lydia picked up the bowl.

She ate.

* * *

 

“Braeden, I will be fine,” Derek said. He sat behind the wheel of his parked car and looked out on a wide expanse of forest. His fingers drummed up against the steering wheel, hitting out a beat that sounded like no song he’d heard before.

He heard her dismissive snort from the other side of the line. “I hear there’s an old saying that goes something like, Famous last words. You heard of it?” she said.

Derek grinned to himself, thinking that it was nice to be cared about. For once, it was nice to have someone who actually cared whether or not he was an idiot. “Look, I’m just following a lead I found in Peter’s apartment. A name, number, and directions. You have the guy’s name and number. And if something happens, we both know that you have a GPS tracker on my car.”

“We both know you broke that, on _purpose_ , a few weeks ago,” she said, her voice low. She was on some kind of assignment that she had received, not to kill someone but to track them. Since the dead pool, she had been much more cautious about taking kill jobs for money; she made a code of her own, mimicking something she had heard Argent say and changing it to suit herself. _I only kill those who kill others_ , she said to him one day after turning down a pretty pricey bounty that was going after another supernatural teenager. _That sounds like a good compromise, right?_ He just held her then, putting his head on her shoulder and drawing her closer. “You couldn’t have even called someone to go with you?”

“Brae,” he said soothingly. “I can protect myself.”

She sighed, loudly and pointedly. “I _know_. But goddamn Derek, I almost lost you not more than a few weeks ago. Why couldn’t you have brought Scott or Isaac or hell, even Peter?”

“They are all wearing themselves out looking for clues about Lydia around Beacon Hills. And Peter can’t leave Beacon County because of his parole,” Derek said. Peter was hiding out from Scott and his pack in Beacon County, which was fairly large, but had told Derek that he had nothing to do with Lydia’s disappearance. Derek, of course, didn’t believe him, but then Peter confessed that he had said something to someone about a banshee and where to find her for the right bit of information on how to regain his alpha status. Peter, of course, had been nearly beaten to death and Derek had promptly told Scott where to find him. As for Lydia, though, nothing had come up. She had been gone two weeks, and all they had discovered was that she had been taken by a werewolf who wanted a banshee to resurrect the dead, and he was sticking to the old Gaelic traditions and beliefs. So Derek followed a lead on his own. He figured it would get him nowhere, and it was stupid to get their hopes up for nothing. He had seen the pack, seen how distraught everyone was and how they were trying so hard not to look upset. “Anyway, Chris is the only person I would have taken with me, but he is hunting someone down for the director of Eichen House so they can get access to Meredith. If he had come up here with me, it would have delayed that. And getting access to another banshee is critical.

“At least tell me where you are.”

Derek looked around him, staring back at the wide expanse of trees. “I’m about an hour and a half away from Portland, Oregon, in some rural, wooded area that has no name. This guy doesn't exactly live at a set address. And the directions I found in Peter’s hideaway are too long to list right now. I’m supposed to meet this guy in five minutes.”

There was a pause in their conversation. He could hear Braeden breathing on the other end, but for a few seconds she said nothing. Finally, she said two words before she hung up. “Be careful.”

Derek shut the phone, the battery almost dead, into his pocket. “I will,” he said to no one in particular as he got out of his car and walked up to the log cabin. This first thing he noticed, and he was sure nearly everyone did, was the massive tree growing next to the house. Derek figured it must provide a lot of shade in the summer and probably drew the attention of a lot of the wildlife living in these woods. He passed by the tree and was shocked, almost, to find that he could barely take his eyes off of it.

The front door opened and a man stepped out, drawing Derek’s attention.

“What are you doin’ here?” he asked gruffly, holding a shotgun that, for the moment, was pointed up. Derek almost laughed; that wasn’t going to do a thing to him.

“I’m Derek Hale. I think we spoke on the phone?”

* * *

 

One second, everything was what she had come to approximate as normal in this place. The voices were constant talking about other supernatural occurrences, whispering and fighting and buzzing. Her body ached and her wrists hurt and everything felt so heavy and miserable and the darkness was still so dark. And then, she felt it. It was like a vibration in her head, a chord being tugged and plucked. It felt like she had been floating, before, like she was slipping slowly into another world and leaving this one behind, but now there was something pulling her back. She thought about tethers and Stiles, about bringing people back from the brink of death, and felt a blush creep up on her cheeks. As much as she wanted it to be him, she knew that he wasn’t here; she would have been able to feel him much more strongly.

Someone, though, was here. Someone she knew. Someone she was connected to. Someone whose presence was bringing her back. She closed her eyes and concentrated, willing herself to hear something that was happening above her.

There were two sets of footsteps, one lighter, one heavy and uneven. Lydia’s heart sped up, beating frantically and erratically in her chest. The voices in her head calmed down, drown out by the humming connection of someone in her pack. There was no other explanation for this feeling, she thought. Someone else was definitely here, it wasn’t just her mind playing tricks on her, trying to get her to hope against all hope that she wasn’t gone forever.

 _"Shhhh,”_ a voice whispered in her head. _“Lydia, just listen_. _”_

Lydia closed her eyes and listened.

* * *

 

The man didn't even let Derek inside, telling him instead to stay on the porch. It didn’t exactly strike Derek as odd; he was, after all, a stranger that came up to his home to ask him questions about Peter, but Derek still tensed. His senses heightened, he started concentrating on things other than the man’s words, taking in the way he smelled and the underlying scent of some chemical, listening closely to his heartbeat.

“What did you want to ask me?” the man said, his eyes narrowed at Derek.

“I wanted to know how you knew Peter Hale,” Derek said.

He noticed there was something unusual about this man, about the way he stood and carried himself. The man was trying to make himself seem bigger and taller; he was trying to assert dominance over Derek. And his fingers twitched almost constantly, like there was something missing, a part of him that he was trying to hide. He kept running his tongue over his teeth, almost as if he wasn’t used to their length or feel.

“I don’t know a Peter Hale,” the man said. “Why do you care, anyway?”

“When we talked over the phone, you said you knew him. Your name is Clyde Porter, right?” The man (Clyde, Derek amended) nodded his head distractedly. He was barely focusing on Derek, barely focusing on the conversation.

Derek was missing something, he had to be. This man was evading everything question he asked, and kept looking off to his left toward the giant tree that adorned his property. And he just kept twitching, kept flicking his tongue out over his incisors, like they should be longer, sharper, less human. But nothing here smelled supernatural. Nothing carried that stench of inhumanity with it, not even the man. He smelled human with just a hint of something else.

“Must of mistaken what you said. Can’t help you,” he said, and then motioned for Derek to get off of his porch. Derek heeded him, taking a few steps off the porch and onto the path that led back to his car. “Get off my property.”

Right. Derek turned his back and shrugged his shoulders, putting his hands into his pockets. What a waste of time to drive all the way up here. What a waste of time to try and track down this lead. Of course Peter would have some useless name written on a piece of paper. Of course it wouldn’t matter. This was, he assumed, all part of Peter’s plot, all part of whatever plan he had laid out for Lydia and himself.

_"DEREK!”_

The shrill scream broke through his thoughts and he whipped around, facial features contorting and tightening, his senses on high alert. Derek felt his blood boil and he hated Peter, hated this man with an intensity he had barely known before. She was here, but she wasn’t safe. He felt the sharp fangs filling his mouth with a quick tang of blood where the sharp edge poked into his lover gums and flicked his fingers forward, revealing a set of long claws. Where had that scream come from? Where was Lydia? He listened and heard her crying, whimpering, calling out his name. “Please, Derek, don’t leave me. Please,” he heard her say, and he charged toward the tree, where the doors of a cellar were barely visible.

This is why Peter had this man’s information. He had given Lydia away, sold her for personal gain like some animal. Derek was so angry; he knew that if Lydia weren’t in danger he wouldn’t be able to see straight. She was just a teenager, just a _child_. She had been through too much already, had seen too much.

Clyde stepped off of the porch and landed in Derek’s way, but he didn’t care. Derek kept moving forward, getting closer and closer to him, ready to lift him up with his claws and toss him away like a ragdoll. If it meant saving Lydia, he would kill him. She deserved to be safe. Clyde raised his shotgun and aimed it at Derek’s chest. He must have been a hunter of some sort. “Give her to me,” he said darkly, raising a hand with his claws visible. “Give her to me and I won’t kill you. That gun won’t do anything to me.”

The man laughed, a sneer on his face. “You’re right,” Clyde said. He threw the gun down and blinked, his eyes turning a deep red. Fangs grew into his mouth, and he, too, lifted a hand tipped off with sharp, deadly claws. He rolled his neck, slowly, his ears elongating and hair sprouting all over his face and visible skin. “I think I can handle you on my own.”

So this man was an alpha, an alpha without a discernible pack or a supernatural scent. He had no idea how Clyde hid this from him, but there were many things about the supernatural world that made little to no sense to him. Derek didn’t care, although he probably should have; all he could think about was her whimpering somewhere below him, begging him not to leave her behind. Derek never left his friends behind. He lunged at the man, feeling his limbs contort into a full wolf, ready to attack. But the man swiftly moved forward and caught Derek by the throat before he could fully transform, slamming him onto the ground. The shock of the attack left Derek unable to shift; Clyde was strong and fast, a lethal combination. And his claws curled right into the back of Derek’s neck.

Derek reached up a clawed hand to push him away or fight him off, but it was of little use. Clyde swiped it away and used his knee to keep Derek’s torso pinned down as she lifted his head again, and slammed it onto the ground. The world blurred, and Derek rapidly blinked to try and get a sense of what was going on. He tried to throw Clyde off of him, tried to regain any kind of foothold in the fight, but the older alpha just applied more pressure. Derek could feel his claws sinking deeper into his neck, and then the world blurred out of existence.

* * *

 

After she screamed, Lydia could suddenly hear the fight, could hear Derek’s labored and angry snarls as he tried to find her. It was like she was listening to him, like she had found a bridge into his mind and thoughts and was aware of everything that was going on. He fought for her, rash and angry but still precise; he knew what he was doing, even if she wasn’t quite aware of the man he was going up against. Lydia felt his power flare up for her and then felt the breath leave his body.

Just as suddenly as his connection had flared up in his brain, it dropped. Disappeared. Faded away into a dark nothingness, again only a slight pulse of understanding. He was alive, she knew. He hadn’t died, nor was he close to death; he was just passed out or somehow, his abilities were incapacitated. Lydia felt relief flood her system; she hadn’t been the cause of the death of another, more powerful and valuable friend. He hadn’t died trying to rescue her, and even though he failed she was glad. Glad that he would make it out of here.

She wondered if the man was taking his memories; alphas can do that to other wolves, even those outside of their packs. Then, he would send Derek on his way, and she would again be trapped here with no way out but _at least he would be alive_ and she wouldn’t have to feel him bleed out all because she had gotten herself taken again. She wouldn’t have to feel the life leave his body and know that even though he said he was doing it for her, even though he cared, a part of him must have hated her, just like she assumed a part of Allison did. Dying for your friends was a noble, worthy cause, but god she was sure it bred resentment.

Lydia closed her eyes and listened, following the directions of the sweet, soft voice from before. She heard footsteps, heavy, uneven, and dragging something, coming closer and closer to her location. She, however, did not hear Derek’s car start. She didn’t even hear the door open, and that car made a lot of noise when you touched it without the proper keys. _What was he doing?_ she wondered, her eyes darting to her cellar door. Derek was a werewolf; although incapacitated now, any chains this man had for him would easily be broken. Derek was stronger than Liam and Malia, and even they would be able to get out of something as feeble as the chains she wore.

The cellar door opened, and the man entered; with one hand, he dragged Derek’s unconscious body, and in the other, he carried another set of chains. These ones were significantly sturdier than hers, but they didn’t look like enough to hold any supernatural creature. She wondered, again, what he was doing. There is no reason for him to keep Derek here; it would just make them more likely to be found. Derek had to have let someone know exactly where he was going, and if he didn’t show up tomorrow or the day afterward, they would notice. Braeden would notice, and Scott would be even more upset, and they would come looking for him because Derek has had a hard life. He deserved to be saved.  

The man made it down the stairs and, with more effort than he ever had to use with her, threw Derek against the wall farthest from her. Derek’s body slammed against the wall and his head briefly rolled back, hit the wall, and then hung forward again. For the first time, with the cellar illuminated, Lydia noticed that there were other hookups on which to secure chains. There were places other than her area where captives could be held. What had this man done in his life that he needed to keep (and she looked around the room, realizing there were two other holding areas, as well) four people locked away in his cellar? What kind of a sadistic serial killer had kidnapped her and now taken Derek hostage?

He looped the chains through different metal hooks, jerking on them to make sure they were absolutely secured to the ground and wall. Then, from his back pocket, he pulled out rubber gloves and a small vial. Lydia quickly noticed that, unlike her manacles, Derek had three circular pieces of metal to keep him shackled to the wall, and that those circular pieces of metal were not heavy and smooth, but interlocked, thin strips with pointed edges. The man dipped each prong carefully into the small vial, taking care to make sure the tip (which would dig into Derek’s skin, she guessed) was fully coated.

He finished the heck first, and slipped the prong collar around Derek’s neck, securing it like one would for a dog. She looked on with disgust as he pulled it, and the little points dug into Derek’s skin. Derek, still unconscious, grunted as tiny drops of blood ran down his next.

“What is that?” she asked frantically as the man started dipping the wrist manacles into the bottle. “What the hell is that?”

The man snorted, and glanced over at her. “Wolfsbane,” he said. He resumed dipping the tiny points into liquid wolfsbane, making sure not to spill any on himself. Lydia was stunned; that would, of course, keep Derek from lashing out or breaking his bonds to get them both out of here. But…

“You’re going to kill him!” she said shrilly, her voice echoing around the cellar. “You have to stop, he’s going to die!”

The man attached another manacle, this time to Derek’s wrist, and gave a little tug to ensure it was tightly secured. “So what if he does?” he asked coldly, starting over again on the last pronged chain.

Panic rose in Lydia’s throat, hot and uncontained. She started reaching out toward Derek, straining her body to be closer to him. He was still with her, she could tell he wasn’t dying but if he was exposed to a concentrated dose of wolfsbane like that he would, she was sure of it.

Oh no oh no _oh no_. Someone else was going to die because of her. It was going to be Derek and Aiden and Allison and how could she tell herself that not all monsters do monstrous things when she was responsible for two and soon to be three deaths? Add to that list the number of people that had perished because of Peter since she brought him back; the number of people that he had used and wrecked and left empty and hallow. Not only that, but because of her scream so many innocent supernatural people had been  put on a dead pool, had been executed for _money_ all because she had felt her friend die, had felt that connection slip away and Meredith decided it was time. How could she have let Meredith tell her that she was a good person, how could she ever have thought that by helping out others, by making sure that Liam and Jordan and Malia and Kira were okay, that she could balance out all of the deaths she had caused.

Her breaths came in rapid puffs as she pulled herself forward, willed herself toward them. If she could just snap her wrists, she might be able to get out of these cuffs. If only she weren’t so useless, so weak; if only her only skill wasn’t being the harbinger of death then maybe, _maybe_ she could save him. Maybe she could have saved everyone like Scott tried to do.

“Derek! Derek please, no,” she said, tears leaking out of her eyes. “Please! Please, I’ll do anything. Just don’t kill him. Don’t kill him, oh god please.”

The man secured the last manacle around Derek’s wrist. He then looked over at her, his head turned slightly to his left side, and his eye squinted in her general direction. “Hm.” He put the cap back on the bottle and slipped it into his pocket. The gloves came off next, and he stood up, looking down at her. “You’ll do anything,” he said, a statement more than a question.

Lydia answered anyway. “Yes. Yes I will do anything just please don’t kill him.”

“So you will promise to bring my son back to life? You promise, right now, to pull his spirit over when the time is right?”

“I promise, I promise, please,” she said, her words punctuated with sobs. “Please, just promise me you won’t kill him.”

The man laughed. He squatted down to look at her in the eyes. “Oh, sweetheart,” he said. “I wasn’t planning on killin’ him. After all, my son is going to need a fresh body when you pull him over. And this boy, well. He will do nicely. That wolfsbane is only strong enough to keep him.”

He laughed as he left the cellar, taking the vial with him and leaving Derek, chained to a wall with lightly poisoned prongs sticking into his neck and wrists, unconscious. Lydia collapsed back into the roots of the tree, her sobs turning into full out crying.

Another person to add to the list of people she had led to their death.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> OKAY SO. Derek. Lydia. Craziness. Sorry if jumping between their perspectives was a little off-putting. I wanted to give the impression that it was all happening at the same time. 
> 
> The poem Lydia quotes is In Memoriam A.H.H. by Lord Alfred Tennyson. It's where the famous line "'Tis better to have loved and lost/ Than never to have loved at all." If you can take a really long 19th century poem and haven't read it already, it's worth it. I'm sure Lydia read it a lot after Allison passed away.
> 
> As always, comments are loved and criticisms, if you have them, are desired.


	7. right in this moment

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Lydia and Derek, plus Stydia. So be warned.

There was something hauntingly familiar about walking down the hallway, but Lydia couldn’t put her finger on exactly what was wrong. It was just another day, she thought as she watched mobs of high schoolers pass her by in the hallway. Completely ordinary, unremarkable. A feeling in her gut nagged her, told her something wasn’t right, but she couldn’t see it. Maybe it was the same feeling that hadn’t left her alone since Allison’s death. Maybe her body was trying to tell her brain that her day wasn’t complete and probably never would be as long as her best friend didn’t exist and she did. As if every molecule was not painfully aware of this fact. As if she didn’t know that she had forced her best friend to leave her. 

Lydia’s footsteps were quiet and small, barely making a noise on the linoleum tile. Even though she was wearing startlingly high heels, at least three inches added on to her rather short stature, the metallic points encased in fine leather made no sound. That was, she always thought, the mark of a fine shoe. You could slip away without having to announce your departure. She stared straight ahead, her eyes not meeting anyone elses as she marched toward her locker by herself. Lydia could feel other people glancing at her out of the corner of their eye, but none of them outright gaped at her; much like in the past, Lydia didn’t need to surround herself with friends, and even though she had once been the symbol of popularity at Beacon Hills, it wasn’t unusual now (nor had it ever been) to see her alone. These days, though, she wasn’t walking down to hallways to meet a boyfriend or friend. She was just walking down to hallway to get her books and hide out in the library until the bell rang for class. 

She glanced down at her cellphone and quickened her pace, the time setting her on edge. It was getting dangerously close to those moments when the Jeep would swing into a parking space with two inhabitants, when she could hear the soft roar of Scott’s bike on the road, and when Kira would come out of her dad’s classroom to meet her boyfriend and best friend. Usually, Lydia had long cleared out of the hallway when the pack arrived, making sure to keep her distance. But today, she must have been running late. How strange. How very, very strange. She felt like she had been through this before, but she couldn’t have; she would have remembered it. There had been a few other close calls in the past, she remembered, and that must have been what was throwing up the warning signs in her head. Those times, she had barely been able to slip out of the hallway before Stiles’ eyes swept down the corridor, searching for her and wondering why she wasn’t with them. Today, she didn’t know if she would be able to get that far. 

Quickly, Lydia twisted the dial on her combination lock, trying to hit the finicky numbers so she could put up the books she had taken home for homework and get out the medical book she started studying in the morning. The dial twisted sluggishly, protesting her frenzied movements. One of the major downsides of  public school had to be the used equipment passed down year after year that wore down and stopped working but never replaced. Her lock was one of those small things that desperately needed to be thrown out; if you didn’t hit the numbers just right, at the perfect speed, it wouldn’t open. 

 _36-5-17_. She tugged on her lock after putting in the numbers the first time and it refused to open. She memorized the numbers as soon as Lydia saw them and had figured out within two days the perfect way to open her locker. But she didn’t have the time to be standing around, applying pressure on _5_ and then letting the lock hang and quickly turning the dial to _17_. They would be here any minute, and if she didn’t get out of the hallway, they would come to her. He would come to her, and talk to her, and smile like the sun in the sky and she wouldn’t be able to stop herself from flying too close. Lydia had avoided melting her wings in his glow for so long. She couldn’t start now, she told herself. She wouldn’t let her defenses down now. 

She rubbed her fingers together, trying to ease out her panic, and started again. _36_ was the easy one. She just had to fight the dial to get it there. And then, for _5_ , she had to grip the lock tightly and press down as she back-pedaled forcing the wheel to move and the second notch to click in place. Finally, _17_ meant she had to let the lock hang free and lightly turn the last wheel into place before she heard the final click and could tug her lock free of the hole. She slipped it out and opened her locker, throwing the heavy books she would need later in the day from her purse into the metal cage. 

Her physics book landed on top of her calculus book, and she tossed her government book in after it. Blessedly, her schedule differed so much from her friends that she didn’t see them at all during the day apart from lunch; Stiles, Kira, and Scott had biology and statistics together, and shared a history class with Malia, plus they each had two of their own electives during the day. But Lydia had art in the morning, then took an advanced history class filled with the top students (Stiles could have gotten in, but wanted to help Malia, and Kira opted out of a harder teacher to stay in a class with her father), followed by calculus, then physics, and finally ended the day with her relatively easy government class. She had tried to tell herself that she hadn’t chosen these classes on purpose, but when she filled out her preferences, she put the hardest classes she could find on the list knowing that her friends wouldn’t follow her in (“I don’t know,” she had told her pack, “they just put me in these classes. I know we agreed to take classes together, but you know how the office is…”). And taking these classes meant that she could use homework and studying as a near constant excuse. It was no secret that physics was one of the most difficult classes one could take at Beacon Hills High, and calculus was just as hard.

Lydia grabbed the medical textbook that she borrowed from Melissa, and slammed her locker door shut. She glanced down the long hallway leading to the entrance, surprised and yet relieved that she couldn’t see her friends entering in the hallway. If Lydia wanted to analyze her own behavior, she would find it weird that she was trying so desperately to avoid people she called friends, but she didn’t want to think about the why and the who that were associated with her intense desire to not see them. 

“You seem to be in quite a rush this morning.” 

Her spine tensed and Lydia nearly jumped a foot into the air. “S-Stiles,” she said quickly, cursing herself for her small stutter. He was by himself today, Malia nowhere in sight. She must have either stayed with Kira or ridden to school with her father today for some time alone with the man who raised her. Lydia gave herself a second to build her composure back, and turned to him with a face as hard as steel, her lips in a tight line and her eyebrow curved upward in question. He leaned against the locker next to her, and even when he wasn’t at his full height he towered over her. If Lydia didn’t wear her heels, she would feel so tiny in his presence. At least now, she felt like she had some power, some confidence. “I didn’t see you come in.” 

He smiled, and his face lit up in all the ways that she always wished Jackson’s would and she felt warm, so warm inside. This is what she was afraid of; the desire to smile back, to laugh with him, for it to be as easy as it always had been between them. She squashed it down. “You were looking for me?” he asked with a hint of mischief in his voice. He crossed his arms over his chest and, in her desire to avoid his face when he grinned like that, she saw the way the muscles in his arm tensed and swelled. 

“You usually make some kind of spectacle upon entering that is nearly impossible to ignore,” she retorted cooly. She needed to get away from him, from his warm eyes and his silly hair and the soft hands that she wanted to slip into her own if only for a second. She needed to get away, or she wouldn’t be able to stop waxing poetic in her own mind about him, and for that she would never forgive herself. Lydia turned on her heel and started off toward the library, only to stop when she felt his fingers brush lightly on her upper arm. She stopped and angled her body just slightly, her eyes turned back to him. “What?” 

“It’s just,” he said, his eyes tracing upward from the floor to her face, “I haven’t talked to you recently. It’s like you’ve disappeared, Lydia.” She blinked in response, sucking her lips in slightly and trying her best not to look pleased that he had noticed. She assumed, by the way his eyebrows worked together and mouth dipped down at the edges, that she looked like it was obvious she was fine, like he was being an idiot. “What’s up?” he asked. 

Lydia shrugged her shoulders, effectively looking like she hadn’t taken note of her own absence and also succeeding in moving her arm out of his far too light touch. “I’ve been busy,” she said. She lifted the medical book up quickly and then put it down again, her eyes looking everywhere but his face. She couldn’t look in his eyes; if she did, she would be lost. He would read her like a book (or worse: he wouldn’t, and she would feel the stinging pain of caring so much and him caring so little in the ways that mattered to her right now that she could break. She was already broken. She didn’t need to be destroyed). 

He bit his lip, and she hazarded a glance up at him. He looked like he wanted to say something to her, and she stayed rooted in place, her heart beating faster and faster. Lydia looked Stiles in the eyes, and memorized the flecks of light brown mixed in with the dark edges, took note of the light that sparkled out of them, the way that they melted when she looked at him. His mouth parted and she took a sharp breath inward, suddenly anxious. She hated herself for feeling this way, for caring so much when he had finally stopped. It wasn’t fair for either of them. But right now, hope built in her chest and she wondered if maybe, if finally, things would go right for her. For him. For both of them. “I…” he said breathlessly. 

“Stiles!” 

They both jerked their bodies toward the voice, and Lydia became aware of the world around her again. Students filed past them, and noises came to life all around her. There were lockers and walls and the smells of fried breakfasts wafting from the cafeteria. 

Malia stood down near Scott’s locker, where she, Scott, and Kira congregated. She was waving at both of them, a huge grin on her face. “Lydia! Stiles! I finished my math homework, and Kira said it was almost all correct!” she cheered up the hallway. Lydia smiled on reflex and yet still felt a genuine happiness that Malia was excelling, and glanced over at Stiles. Whatever had just happened between them was gone, his searching eyes and hesitant words replaced by a proud grin.

Stiles moved toward them and Lydia turned away, repressing whatever had kept her close to him for those few minutes before the rest of their friends came. She muttered something to his retreating back about class before walking away from the pack, getting far enough away so only Scott could hear her sobs. If these past few weeks were any indication, they wouldn’t come looking for her. Scott would hear her and ask her if something was wrong and she would say stress, and if he pressed again she would say _Allison_ or _Aiden_ and be done with it. Scott cared, and Scott noticed, but Scott didn’t know her like Allison or Stiles knew her. She loved Scott, but she couldn’t tell him everything and let him in like she would a best friend; not yet. She couldn’t let him fill the voids left in her life without then having to fill his own. And she, like him, was no match for Allison. 

Tears dripped down her fact surprisingly fast as she walked away. 

She didn’t want to think about why she was so emotional, or why it felt like her lungs had been ripped out and stopped on. Lydia pushed through crowds, heading into a rarely used bathroom near her physics classroom, waiting until she had locked herself in the stall to let loose. Her chest moved up and down, and a soft pain built around her collarbone, tearing at her chest and burrowing into her heart. Her fingernails scratched up against her thumb to remind her that she was still here, that she hadn’t become a silhouette, invisible to the world around her and interchangeable with any other person who tried to join their group. She was a person. She can still feel something other than heartbreak. She mattered to her friends. She kept telling herself these things, but nothing could stop the tears. Her breath sounded ragged and wet.  Her lungs felt faulty, broken, corrupted, and still she heaved. 

The room around her darkened, and she thought she felt it shrink and change in her misery. She thought she felt dirt under her feet, and her arms ached heavily from the bracelets she wore. But when she opened her eyes, it was still the bathroom next to her physics classroom, and the thin circles of metal on both of her wrists couldn’t have weighed more than an ounce each. What was going on? She got up off the bathroom floor, and looked at herself in the mirror, her reflection changing constantly. At first, she looked put together - nothing but her red rimmed eyes to indicate that something was wrong. But her image flickered and distorted, and there was dirt caked into her hair and her eyes were sunken in on her thin face. She looked gaunt, a skeleton with skin stretched thinly over the bones. And suddenly, she changed, and her throat was slashed, blood trailing down her pale skin and down on to the white dress she wore. 

“What the hell,” she said softly. Was this some kind of trick? Some weird banshee feeling, telling her that something was going to happen that was going to put her in danger? 

A bang echoed around the bathroom, and Lydia turned to see Scott framed in the doorway. A bright light ringed him, and he looked at her, a mixture of panic and relief on his face. “Lydia,” he said softly, and she felt her heart lift to see him. It had been so long, she thought, since she had seen him. Scott smiled and Lydia smiled back. Her family was here. Her alpha had found her. And though she couldn’t see any of them, she could feel Danny and Ethan near him, could tell that Isaac and Liam had followed Scott to find her. And Kira, she could feel the electricity in the air, was here too, with Malia and _Stiles_ and… and… she could feel Peter, too. 

But Ethan wasn’t at the school and neither was Isaac, and Danny had graduated, and why was Peter there? 

Suddenly, Lydia was in a cellar, and Scott was standing at the top of the stairs, and Lydia started running toward him. His name caught sickly in her throat as Scott stumbled forward, blood dropping out of his mouth. He still looked relieved, the ghost of a smile etched on his face, and Lydia screamed out his name as he fell into her open arms. He tried to say something and she tried to quiet him, tears falling down her face. Scott was dying. For her. Why did everyone die for her? 

“It’s okay,” he said, one of his hands pressed on to his face. “You’re safe. I did this so you’d be safe.” His hair grew and his face changed, slimming the jawline and lightening the skin. A slender finger touched Lydia’s face, and Allison looked up at her, a sad smile on her face. The blood coming out of her mouth was worrying, and Lydia whimpered, pressed a hand into Allison’s wound. She had to stop the bleeding or else Allison will die for her, and she didn’t want someone to die for her. She didn’t want Allison to hate her. 

Allison just chuckled and coughed, her eyes crinkled and the dimples on her cheeks evident.  “I don’t regret dying, Lydia. I don’t resent you,” she said softly. “I miss you, but I’m always going to be with you.” 

“No, no, Allison, please.” Her face flickered back to Scott’s, and he said he was so glad to have found her again. Her fingers were slick with blood. “Please, Scott, no!” Her voice mounted to a scream, and Lydia’s eyes shot open, revealing darkness. All of her senses felt like they had been left in her dream, like she was never going to see or hear again, after her heart had been ripped out multiple times. God, what kind of subconscious did she have? 

Her ears recovered first, and she heard footsteps coming down the stairs, and heard a gruff voice announce it was time to eat. She blinked, adjusting to the light flooding the room, and smelled something that was both delicious and revolting. Lately, Lydia had a hard time eating what was given to her; every smell made something in her whine and grumble in protest, and it was easier to avoid eating for a day than it was to be miserable for two. Clyde set down food in front of both of them and left without saying much; he must be thinking about something or dealing with some problem. She looked down at the grilled cheese sandwich and apple that Clyde ‘prepared’ for her with disgust. Derek, as always, got a little more to keep his body strong enough for the soul to take but not enough to help him overcome the poison. Lydia got enough to keep her alive. 

She stretched out her limbs and pushed the plate away from her, giving one final shove to send it over to Derek. He looked at her with the the same worried look he always did when she sent her food over his way. Lydia slumped back into the roots of the tree. “You need it more than I do,” she said grimly. “I’m not hungry.” 

He frowned. “You’re never hungry.” She opened her mouth to protest, but he spoke first. “You’ve eaten once in the past four days.”

“I’m small, that’s all I need.” 

Derek said nothing, but his skeptical eyes told her everything she needed to know. He had a theory that the tree was somehow amplifying her power and sustaining her, but that it was also bringing her closer and closer to the spirit world. The same thing had happened with Jennifer; she almost died near a nemeton and survived, building up her energy day after day. It sustained her but also made her less human. The same, he thought, was happening for Lydia; it just wasn’t making her evil. 

Her head pounded from her dream, the voices louder than they had been in a few days. She didn’t used to hear them constantly, but now it seemed like they never stopped. Even if she screamed, they kept whispering urgently, telling her things she didn’t want to hear. There was a deer being hunted a few miles from here. She felt the life drain from it’s body, and shivered, her mind racing back to Scott and the blood that she could still feel clinging to her hands. 

She heard him ask if she was alright, if there was something wrong. “It’s nothing,” she said thickly, finally pushing herself out of the enclave in the tree she called her bed. Her heart was still beating quickly, and she was fighting down a panic attack. It had felt so real, like Scott was dying in her arms. And this wasn’t the first time she had this dream. He picked up the apple from her plate and, despite the small pricks of pain that obviously followed, threw it to her. She caught it, and place it easily next to her leg.. “I’m fine.” 

He snorted, but his eyes betrayed a warmth that meant he was worried. “You were fine, and then you started crying. After that, you started saying Scott over and over again in your sleep. Now you’re not eating. Eat the apple.” 

She shook some dirt out of her hair and frowned at him. “Sometimes I dream about Scott,” she said simply. The movement helped her think about something other than her nightmare, and she kept shaking her hair out even after the loose dirt was gone. He watched her, and she picked the apple up, taking a very obvious bite. The apply was tart and juicy, which was, in her opinion, the best way an apply can be, and she was glad he gave it back to her.

His eyebrows raised again, waiting for her to start talking. She ignored him and kept eating. Lydia knew that if Derek kept questioning her, she would end up telling him her whole dream so he could analyze every detail and try to work out exactly what it meant, like he had the time she dreamed of Peter attacking her (“You’re in danger,” he said. She had snorted and responded, “No shit.”) or of him transforming into a wolf or of her mother singing her a song about a lass who was gone. But if she started reliving that dream, started remembering it in all its detail, she could very well have a panic attack, start screaming, or worse. 

“And sometimes you dream about Stiles,” Derek said with an easy shrug. Lydia turned her sharp eyes on him, and noticed the way he stared at her. There was a hint of a smile, something understanding in the depth of his eyes. 

“You know,” she stated..

Derek thinly smiled. The chains around his neck shifted, slightly, and he winced as wolfsbane soaked prongs poked him slightly. Clyde came down every night to refresh the poison on Derek’s collar, and emptied the pots he gave both of them to serve as a bathroom. Once there were two of them, he reckoned they shouldn’t be peeing all over the place, although he clearly didn’t care that they would have to use the bathroom in front of each other. He had laughed and called it pack bonding when Lydia complained. 

“One, you said his name a few times before you started crying. Two, you’ve dreamt about him a few times and every time you smell like oxytocin.” 

Lydia snorted. “You know what oxytocin _smells_ like?” 

“I do. And three, everyone knows,” he said. He thought about it for a second longer, and then raised his thick brows, a sign that he was rethinking his previous statement. She had learned so many of Derek’s quirks and tells in the past few days; it was crazy how quickly you could get to know someone when you were trapped with them and had to use the bathroom in front of them. Pack bonding, indeed. “Well, except Scott, Malia, and Stiles. Braeden could see it from a mile away the last time she saw you two together, and I think Kira is starting to suspect something. Have you told anyone?” 

Lydia nodded, her own chains loose enough that they didn’t rattle or stick her painfully with every movement. “Danny knows. He knew before he left. It’s… been a long standing thing.” 

“Not since the third grade, though.” 

She gave a small smile. Derek watched her intently, his eyes never leaving her face. She realized he was trying to stabilize her emotions and keep her from panicking and crying by talking about love and her friends before asking her to recount her dream. She was grateful for him, grateful for the care that he showed her. “No, not quite that long.” If this was how Stiles felt all of those years that she walked around, not quite oblivious to his crush but not caring, then she felt sorry for him.   

Derek shrugged. “Which is a good thing,” Derek said decisively. She looked up at him, one brow perfectly arched. He chuckled lightly. _He is in quite a good mood for someone who’s been trapped for four days_ , she thought. He got over the initial shock of capture much more easily than she did. But then again, this was more of a normal occurrence for him than it was for her. “Well, this means you actually care about him. Like, the actual, dorky idiot he is.” 

“I do,” she said. “Not that it matters, really.” Derek blinked at her and cocked his head to the side. He was asking her to continue her line of reasoning. “He’s with another girl, and they’re great for each other. Plus,” she said, “Malia loves him. I wouldn’t want her to be hurt, even if she doesn’t feel the same about me. And, more importantly, he doesn’t like me romantically anymore.” 

“They won’t be together forever. I would never allow Stiles into our family. He wouldn’t do well with Hale for a last name,” Derek said with a smile. Lydia had to laugh at that, her spirits finally rising a little bit. There were many things, she knew, that Derek excelled at, and though he was not a great alpha, he was a good friend and an even better mentor. He wanted people to succeed and be happy. He face settled, became more serious, but she definitely felt better. “Anyway, how many high school relationships do you know that last?” 

“Can we stop talking about my love life, please?” she said. He was getting dangerously close to the conversations she used to have with herself before she was taken, and she would rather not relive those. “If you haven’t noticed, we are trapped in a cellar next to a yew tree that you seem to believe is keeping me alive and no one knows where we are. There are better things to be thinking about.”

He took in her defensive tone, realized what was happening, and smirked. “Not really,” Derek said. “There’s not much we can do about our situation. And it makes you happy to think about Stiles, even if it hurts, too.” She glared at him. He tipped his hands up, careful not to move too much, wary of the metal prongs poised over his veins. “Fine. If you’re feeling better, can you tell me about your dream?” 

His voice was soft, and she knew that he was proceeding with caution. Sometimes, Lydia would start to recant what happened to her and break down in tears, and at other times she was liable to start reliving the dream. Derek was right that it was connected to the spirits that she could clearly hear now. If she started thinking too much about what she saw when she was sad, they would start to talk to her and scream at her and she would use all of her strength to build herself back up. 

Lydia nodded. It took her a few seconds, and then she started talking, keeping her eyes on him. “I was at school, to start. I think at first, it was just a regular dream, but then…” She bit her lip, thinking about the way that Stiles looked at her and how alive she felt. How she wished it was real. Derek didn’t need to know about that part, not the way that her heart raced and how his eyes looked. He already knew she liked Stiles. He didn’t need to know, nor did he want, the details. “Then, I started crying, and went into a bathroom, and my surroundings changed. I thought I was here, and then there again.” She squinted, trying to remember the exact details. “Scott found me. And he was surrounded by light. Then he was coming from the cellar doors, and he saw me and he was so relieved. And then something stabbed him. Scott… Scott died.” 

Derek’s eyes widened. “You’re sure? He wasn’t healing? Did he look upset? Angry? Like he was expecting it?” 

The image of Scott, fresh blood coming out of some wound, materialized in her mind. “He looked relieved to find me, not angry or even hurt. but I could feel the life draining from him. I could feel the power leave him. He wasn’t going to heal from that. But then again, it didn’t feel like death usually does. And I know it’s just a dream, but usually there is an element to this feeling that I just couldn’t detect. I can’t explain it.”

The frown in Derek’s face deepened, and Lydia flashed back to the first months she knew Derek. He was grumpy then, more likely to be frowning and sarcastic than smiling and helpful. But then again, when he first met her, she was stuck up, spoiled, and feigning idiocy for attention.  _Time does not change us. It just unfolds us._

“What do you think?” he asked.

"I feel like it was pretty straightforward, for once.” She paused. “I’ve been having a variation of this dream since I was taken, but never quite in that detail,” Lydia admitted. Derek cocked his head again, this time to admonish her, but she cut him off with a look. She knew that telling him about Scott, about her dreams, would have been the smart thing to do. But she hadn’t wanted to come to terms with the truth: that once again, finding her would cost someone’s life. “I think, if he finds me, Scott is going to die. But not completely, if that makes sense.”

Her voice drifted away from her, and she closed her mouth. Derek was still puzzling over the pieces she laid down, trying to figure out exactly what she was predicting. “Was there anything else? Was anyone else in the dream that really stood out?”

“Stiles. And Malia, but only because of Stiles,” she said. Her mind sifted through her dream, pulling up every person she felt attached to her, every energy that felt distinct and powerful. “Peter. Peter was here, too,” she said quietly. This wasn’t the first time that she had felt Peter in a dream about Scott, but usually she ignored his presence. She didn’t want to think of him any more than she had to, any more than was necessary.

Derek sighed. “Of course. Of course he would be in your dream.” Derek was angry, and she watched his fist tighten. “Peter was the one who told this guy where you were and how to find you.”

Lydia smiled humorlessly. Her mind was working on something far larger than her own disappearance. “I figured,” she said. “Peter Hale ruins lives. No offense.” She had already guessed that Peter put her here, and she figured he wanted her taken because she would be able to sense Scott’s death. Just like in Mexico, when she was left behind because Peter didn’t want her to reveal his plot to kill Scott… and make himself the alpha… No.

“Peter Hale ruined my life, too,” Derek said. “So none taken. I haven’t been able to figure out why, though. Why he let you go.”

Little pieces popped into place, her mind stretching out all of the possibilities and then shrinking them, one by one, going on logic and premonition. “He let me go,” she said, “because he wants to kill Scott. And he can’t kill Scott it I warn him.”

“But sending you here seems dangerous,” Derek replied. “This guy… Clyde. He could kill you. He _will_ kill you.”

"Peter won’t let it get that far. Or, at least, he doesn’t want it to get that far. I think… I think he wants Scott to find me. I think that’s why I can always see Scott die in front of my eyes in my dreams.” Her words came out faster now, pouring out of her with a desperation that surprised her. “He has to find me, but why?” Her question was urgent, and she turned to Derek, studying him, searching him. He had answers. He had to have answers.

But Derek’s blank look told her that he didn’t know, and though he was thinking, it would take him a while. Derek didn’t know everything there was to know about being an alpha. As he told her before, he wasn’t a good one.

She bit her lip, tears forming in her eyes. “Scott won’t listen if I tell him not to come,” she said. Derek nodded sadly. They both knew that Scott was going to come looking for her, wasn’t going to stop until he saw her and touched her and knew she was safe. He was her alpha, and he gained strength from his pack, felt the desire to protect them and keep them safe. “He’s not going to listen. And Peter will find a way to get here when Scott does.”

“Lydia,” Derek said softly as she started to cry. But no words could console her at the moment, and Derek knew better than to try.

Either they were going to die or Scott was. Lydia was sure of it.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> ALRIGHT SO this, uh, took a while. I'm not sure if you guys noticed or anything...
> 
> Anyway, there is an reason but it doesn't excuse my lateness. I tried writing this chapter, and it was a completely different chapter (as in, written from Scott, Stiles, and Malia's POV) and I couldn't get it out. I tried, a lot, and have several drafts of the first page of that chapter that can show how not good it was. That will come soon, because that one actually advances the plot. But because that one is frustrating, I wrote this instead, and loved it and was really excited about how this interaction turned out because in my head it wasn't as good? 
> 
> So as an apology for being late, you get Stydia and Derek/Lydia friendship. They're my faves. 
> 
> But really I am so sorry for being late and not updating this. You can hate me. I hate me. But I hope you don't hate this chapter.


	8. this order's tall

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Scott, Stiles, and Malia do stuff. Some Stydia I think.

There are times, he supposed, when three weeks felt like nothing. Before (and he barely noticed that his brain had categorized his life into a  _before_  and  _after_ , as in  _before_   _Scott was bitten_  and  _after it all changed_ ), three weeks toward the beginning of the school year seemed to run together in a blur of homework and his dad watching football and playing video games with his best friend, and he defined years by his grade in school. Now,  _after_ , his life was segmented into supernatural happenings, into threats and raised alarms and fear for his life and the lives of his friends, and three weeks felt like forever. Anything could happen in three weeks. Friends could die, assassins could come, maniac patriarchs of hunter families could invade your small town and try to murder everyone so he could live forever.

Stiles closed his eyes.

She had been gone for three weeks. Three weeks in which they hadn’t been able to track down a lead or find her or even get definitive proof that she wasn’t dead, that she was still alive. Kira had her theories and Deaton had his research and Scott had his gut feeling that pointed toward yes, she’s alive. Lydia is  _alive_. But Stiles, he couldn’t say for certain. Maybe, he thought, maybe he would be able to feel if she were gone, that somehow they had a connection which pulled them together. In the past weeks, he tried to focus on it.  _She_  could hear him when he was gone.  _She_  came looking for  _him_  and he wasn’t a dead body, the only things she was convinced she could find. She found him while he was  _still alive_  and helped bring him back. There must be something, or there had been something at some point, that linked them. But all he has is a burning desire to see her again and the notion that, if she did die, he would be hollow. No proof, no feelings, no innate knowledge that she wasn’t quite as gone as she appeared. When, he wondered, had things changed so spectacularly? When had Scott and Kira and Ethan and Isaac started caring more about Lydia than he did?

He shifted in his bed, his sheets rustling around him, and opened his eyes to look around his room. He was alone, which wouldn’t have been normal a few weeks ago but now was the only way that he felt he could sleep (even though he didn’t). It used to be, after he was possessed, that he needed someone else near him. He needed that human contact to remind him that he was grounded, that he was still in control, that he still existed. Malia had been all too happy to oblige and stayed over more often than not to stop his nightmares and coax him into bed. Now his thoughts kept him awake even when he was exhausted beyond belief, and on those too rare occasions he did fall asleep, Lydia’s face would jolt him awake. Her pleading eyes and pale hands and the threat of her death kept him from sleeping. And it was easier for Malia, he told himself, to be away from him, not the other way around. She would get more sleep if she wasn’t concentrated on his breathing or his energy or his overwhelming feeling of guilt and shame and horror. He sent her away for her own benefit.

For the most part, his room was straight, empty, clean. He didn’t spend much time in here anymore. When he wasn’t being forced to go to school, he was with Scott or the pack trying to track down a lead. They had ventured out a few times, following leads that seemed promising but went nowhere. Kira’s mother heard of a wolf looking for a banshee in Nevada, but when they went, it turned out to be nothing more than a small pack who had heard of their plight and wanted to know if they did have a banshee. Isaac nearly killed them out of frustration and anger, and the other pack retaliated. Isaac had a sick bite on his upper arm for his trouble, and they came back with a few more injuries than they were expecting. Scott got his arm broken protecting Malia, and Kira nearly passed out after one of the wolves hit her with a heavy uppercut. From then on, they had to be more selective with where they went; they now knew anything could be a trap by other packs who had heard about their banshee problem. Stiles had no idea banshees were so rare or sought after, and Mrs. Yukimura had to sit down and tell them, with Deaton’s help, what was so valuable about having a banshee in your pack. They can predict danger to the pack, are intuitive about supernatural happenings in the area, and oftentimes are imbued with other gifts. Meredith, they reminded the pack, could hear the thoughts of other supernatural creatures in select circumstances. Mrs. Yukimura said Lydia’s other gifts, if she had any, hadn’t been revealed yet, but Stiles noticed Deaton give Scott a very pointed look, and Scott couldn’t make eye contact with anyone for an hour afterward.

And, of course, their parents were much more reluctant to let them go chasing supernatural creatures across the West Coast when they found out every potential lead could be a trap. His dad threatened to handcuff him in a cell if he skipped school and came home bleeding one more time. The Sheriff reminded Stiles that he didn’t have supernatural healing, that a claw through the chest or throat would be fatal to him. Mrs. McCall said that they couldn’t go skipping school constantly if they cared at all about getting into college, and they should care, because they wouldn’t be teenagers forever. So Scott, Stiles, Kira, Malia, and Liam were forced to go to school, unable to skip unless they were “sure, completely sure” that they were going to find Lydia and, of course, took every adult they knew with them. Isaac, Danny, and Ethan were more mobile than the rest of them since they didn’t have to go to school, and they went through leads like water, shaking people down in an effort to find someone. With Mr. Argent gone, Mrs. Yukimura stepped up to help the effort, often travelling with Ethan and Isaac to supernatural packs in the area. They were doing something, he thought. They were actively trying to track Lydia down.

What was he doing?

In the corner of his room, barely visible to his eye, were a few photos shadowed by the darkness of night and seemingly colorless strings, wrapping around and under each other, reminding him that there are some mysteries he can’t solve. Lydia’s picture was in the dead center, smiling back at him, laughing at something someone had said that day. It was one that Scott had because Allison had it before him, and when Mr. Argent had given both Scott and Lydia different boxes of Allison’s stuff, a picture of Lydia had found its way into Scott’s hands. He kept it, to quote Scott, because “she looks happy, and she hardly smiles like that anymore. It’s nice to remember that she can, you know?”  Around her were other pictures of Lydia supplied by mostly by Danny and a few were of her and Allison. He had put up so many photos of her because without them, his board would be depressingly empty, and he’d have to admit to himself that his ability to figure things out wasn’t helping at all. That he was basically useless.

In the corner of the board was a picture of Peter, connected to the Lydia-centric photo cloud by a yellow string. Stiles knew that Peter had something to do with it, but his involvement, as it usually was, was still to be determined. From there, a giant question mark was linked to both Lydia and Peter, and a newly added picture of Derek pulled a red string away from Lydia. They weren’t sure if Derek and Lydia were actually connected; last Friday Deaton told them Derek was missing and had been missing for a few days. They all had assumed he was with Braeden somewhere after touching base with Scott in Beacon Hills and putting Peter in custody. It was easy to gloss over his disappearance, to say they had more pressing matters than what Derek chose to do with his time. They had assumed, just like they had with Lydia.

Since then, Stiles caught himself wondering what connected Lydia and Derek, why those two were the ones to go missing. If they had any connections outside of the pack, he couldn’t find it. So Derek went up on the board too, and left Stiles with more questions than answers. Like why, when he found out that Derek was missing too, Scott seemed nearly relieved. Derek’s picture was the first thing to go up after the initial placement of information and, sadly, was the last.

If he hadn’t known each inch of his board by heart, if he hadn’t studied every clue they had over and over again, maybe he would be able to sleep. He certainly wouldn’t be able to read it now; it was nearly pitch black outside. The moon was a waning crescent, barely a sliver of silver in the sky. In a few days, the moon would be new and it really would be completely dark outside. Stiles ran through the cycles of the moon in his head, trying to distract himself from the fact that only a week and four days stood between them and Samhain, the day Kira guessed Lydia would be sacrificed. Guessed being the operative word, of course. None of them had a clue whether or not Kira was right, and they hadn’t been able to see Meredith to confirm if Lydia was dead.

The word echoed in his mind.  _Dead._ He tried not to think about her lifeless body or dull eyes, tried not to picture her the way he had seen so many other dead bodies in his awfully short lifetime. Even with his eyes open wide, Stiles could piece together his most recent nightmares. Lydia’s pale body stayed still for a few moments, her back on the ground of his dream, until she turned her head to face him. She was clearly dead—the swivel of her head seemed unnatural—but that didn’t stop her from looking at him. “You abandoned me,” she said, and rolled over until she was on her stomach, able to crawl toward him. “You let me die, Stiles. You stopped caring.”

He’d been having variations of that nightmare for the past two weeks and they only got worse the longer she was gone. Each time, when he tried to touch her or comfort her, she disappeared. She crumbled into dust and was gone before he could do anything. His own ragged breaths and silent screams would wake him, and Stiles found himself hollowed out and empty, aching for Lydia and her presence, and worried he would never see her again.

At least he could tell when he was having a nightmare this time. In his nightmares, Lydia was there. Dead or alive, she was there. He turned his head from the ceiling and stared out across his room, letting silence fill his ears. The second he started seeing Lydia corpses when he was awake was when he knew he had lost it.

An arm appeared in his window, and Stiles jerked upward, his whole body flinging toward the wall as he screamed. God fucking  _damn_ , he hadn’t meant to tell his brain to start materializing dead bodies crawling through his window to tell himself that he was officially mentally incapacitated. The window flung open and Stiles wished his dad was there, if not to shoot the intruder than to shoot Stiles and put him out of his misery. Death would be more pleasant than this.

Scott stood in the middle of Stiles’ room, staring at his friend with concern. Light flooded the space, and Stiles brain quickly decided Scott was fast enough to turn on the light while Stiles was almost having a panic attack.  _Almost_. “Dude, what is it? What’s wrong?”

“Jesus fucking Christ, Scott,” Stiles said loudly. “You fucking know where the key is! It is in the same place it has been since we were eleven and I was able to walk home alone from school but kept forgetting my key. Use it, asshole!”

Scott shrugged, and pulled the chair out from Stiles’ desk to sit down. “I didn’t want to wake your dad,” he said.

Stiles pursed his lips, and gave a look that he hoped conveyed annoyance and not  _I-nearly-had-a-heart-attack_. For one, Scott could plainly see the cruiser was not in the driveway, meaning his father was not home. And, second, his dad would have excused squeaking up the stairs, but he sure as hell would not have appreciated his son screaming expletives at the top of his lungs. “Aren’t you supposed to be at Kira’s house?” Stiles asked. “You know, doing the whole weird boyfriend thing by watching her without actually sleeping, like some kind of real-life Edward Cullen?”

“Who is Edward Cullen?”

“What, you haven’t seen  _Twilight_ , either?”

Scott frowned. “You’ve seen  _Twilight_?”

Stiles froze. “Nevermind. Why are you here? Why aren’t you there?”

Scott paused, and glanced down at his phone. “Malia is with Kira. She has been all week. I think she has trouble sleeping when she’s not with someone else.” Scott’s speech was halting, cautious. Like he had questions he wanted to ask but didn’t want to put Stiles on the spot. Stiles frowned; it had been a while since he and Malia had seen each other outside of a pack setting, but they were still dating. He just… needed some time alone. And it was better for her of course, he reminded himself quickly. She didn’t need to be around him when he reeked of guilt and feelings of failure because he couldn’t do for Lydia what she had done for him. But instead of saying all of this, Stiles remained silent and waited for Scott to continue. He wasn’t going to answer questions he hadn’t been asked. The silence stretched out between them, vast and empty, and Stiles watched Scott watch him.

Scott looked down at his phone again. “Also, Chris called. With news.”

His ears perked up and Stiles hurriedly pushed himself to the edge of his bed. Chris Argent had been gone for over two weeks. He left Isaac with them and told Scott that he would be back as soon as possible, but that he needed to do this if they were going to be able to find Lydia. They had all expected him to be back within a few days, but he disappeared, going off the grid. “What did he say?”

“We’re going to see Meredith tomorrow morning. Or this morning? I guess it’s past midnight already, huh,” Scott said.

Stiles’ heart started beating faster, unable to contain both his excitement and his anxiety. Meredith would be able to confirm if Lydia were alive, but so far she had been unavailable. The director of Eichen was hesitant about letting Meredith talk to anyone, and wouldn’t even let his patient out when the sheriff demanded her help in an on-going investigation. Her mental health, he had said, came first. And seeing how the last time Stiles went to see Meredith, she pretended to kill herself, he could see why the reaction wasn’t more welcoming. But Chris must have done something in those two weeks to get the director’s attention.

“I’m coming with you,” Stiles said. Scott narrowed his eyes and arched an eyebrow.  “To see Meredith. I’m coming with you.”

Scott frowned. “I don’t know if that is such a great idea, dude. You don’t have the best track record with Eichen House or Chris Argent.”

Allison’s lifeless body flashed in his head and a mirror image of his face, smiling darkly, came afterward. Stiles winced slightly; he knew that there were things he had done, things that happened because of him, that were almost unforgivable. But this was for Lydia. Allison would understand the desire to do almost anything for Lydia. So would Chris. Or, at least, Stiles hoped Mr. Argent would understand. Stiles waited for a breath, then two, his eyes trained on the floor. “Scott,” he said quietly. “Please. It’s… It’s Lydia. I have to hear it for myself. Whether she…” He looked up at his best friend, and saw a similar pain reflected in his eyes.

“Yeah. Yeah, I get it.”

They were quiet for a few moments as Scott sent something from his phone. Stiles stared up at the board, now brightly illuminated, the mysterious taunting him. There was a picture of the group from a year or so ago he had wanted to throw up there, to remind him that there were times when he and Lydia hung out, when he saw her nearly every day. It was the only picture he could remember of Lydia and the pack, although it was a much different pack than the one they were in now: it featured Isaac, Allison, Scott, Lydia, and himself. It was taken sometime after Jennifer Blake disappeared, after the Deucalion left town, when they were all just glad to be okay. But he couldn’t find it. Lydia had the only copy he knew of, and though he had searched her room, it wasn’t there. He figured she must have thrown it out or boxed it up after Allison died.

He wanted it, not to put up on the board, but to keep for himself. It was one of a only a handful of pictures that had both of them in it, side-by-side. When he saw it for the first time on her nightstand after it was taken, he was secretly pleased that she kept something like that so close to her, something that showed her as part of their group, as a friend. As his friend. Lydia had always been by herself; untouchable, not just for him but for nearly everyone. But Allison opened her up and she took them all in and she became their friend and worked harder, he realized, than any of them to be in the group. He wondered, not for the first time, if they were the first group of friends Lydia really chose for herself; if she tried so hard because she wasn’t used to people who liked her for her and not for her boyfriend or her popularity. He hadn’t really thought about it before she left, but once everyone came out to find her, once it was clear that Kira and Liam and Isaac and Ethan cared so much, he realized that even when she was avoiding him—and Scott, he supposed—she was still making sure that those friends and connections she worked so hard for weren’t lost.  

“Did you hear me?”

Stiles looked over at Scott, aware again that he wasn’t alone in his room. “Huh? Sorry, no. I was…” Stiles looked up at the pictures of Lydia again.

Scott followed his eyes. “Chris said you should come,” Scott said finally. He stood up and walked over, sitting next to Stiles on the bed they sometimes shared as kids when Scott slept over, since Stiles’ floor was hardwood and Scott’s sleeping bag was too thin to be comfortable. They both stared at Lydia’s face in silence for a few seconds; Stiles lost in thought and Scott too nice to say anything.

“She’s been gone for three weeks,” Stiles said, his eyes never once leaving the picture of her face. Out of the corner of his eye he saw Scott bow his head but Stiles couldn’t look at him right now. All he could see was Lydia. “Three weeks. That’s the longest that one of our friends has been missing. Even three weeks after Derek was gone, we knew he was in Mexico. But Lydia…”

“We will find her,” Scott said firmly.

Stiles shook his head. He ran his tongue over his lips and sucked them inward. “Will we?” he asked. His voice was quiet, subdued, not the frenzied anger he usually possessed when people brought up Lydia these days. “We have no leads, Scott. Peter’s been in custody for a week now and he won’t speak. He just keeps laughing at us. Derek is gone, probably following some lead he didn’t bother to tell us about. Chris has been doing who knows what who knows where to get us access to a banshee so we can confirm, for the first time I might add, that Lydia isn’t actually dead. Even Mrs. Yukimura’s first lead didn’t go anywhere. All the witch could say was that Lydia’s presence was being amplified by some supernatural element, and her vision just saw dirt and a yew tree. How is that going to help us? How is any of this going to help us find her? It’s impossible, Scott.”

A simple shrug drew Stiles’ eyes back to Scott. His best friend was still staring at Lydia’s picture, a frown on his lips. Stiles didn’t want to think about his board or the fact that he was failing at the things he usually excelled at, like researching and connecting the dots and figuring out exactly what was going on before everyone else. While he was falling apart, Stiles thought, Scott was becoming more and more of a hero. Scott held the pack together, made sure to talk to each and every person, laid out plans and constructed leads on his own. He couldn’t follow them, but he, as he said, could provide Isaac, Ethan, and Danny with as much support as possible. It was Scott who narrowed Lydia’s location down, with Kira’s help, to the pacific northwest. It was the yew tree, Scott said, that helped him the most. And the feeling he got that he was right.

Scott looked thoughtful and reserved, his profile reminding Stiles of great leaders poised before their followers. When he looked like this, it was easy to forget that Scott was just a teenager, just like him. It was easy to forget that he shouldn’t have the weight of the world on his shoulders. “I don’t know. But we’ve done the impossible before, and I think we’ll do it again. For Lydia, I think we can do just about anything. She would do the same for us.”

Stiles’ shoulders heaved forward and he was overcome with the desire to cry. It wasn’t the first time that he’d felt like crying, like giving in to despair and ripping his hair out and crying, but he hadn’t. Crying felt too much like mourning, like giving up. He felt Scott’s hand on his back. They were quiet for a long time, sitting there on his bed, both staring at Lydia’s picture. She looked back at them, unseeing, her green eyes sparkling with some knowledge that they didn’t have. She was beautiful. She always had been beautiful. Stiles’ chest felt heavy, loaded down with all of the emotions he couldn’t get out, all of the feelings he couldn’t let go. What if he never saw her again? What if he could never kiss her again or know what it was like to love her and be loved by her? What if he was never able to tell her that he still cared for her, that not seeing her every day was tearing him apart and that he wasn’t going to let her avoid him forever?

He heard Scott sigh. He wasn’t quite sure how long they stayed like this, so close and yet both so far away, both thinking of someone they lost. Stiles wondered if Scott felt differently than he did, if this immeasurable pain was his alone to bear. He had seen, ever since Lydia was bitten, the bond that existed between Scott and Lydia, the link that neither could get rid of, the way their paths paralelled. He had watched it happen and imagined them as siblings forged through the fires of Peter’s bite, imagined them as mirrors of each other, heroes finding themselves. And, over time, Stiles believed that his relationship with Lydia had changed from obsession to friendship and then something deeper, something like she and Scott had found for themselves. Siblings. Friends. When he started dating Malia he was sure that that must have been the case, that he cared about her like Scott cared about her.

“Are you okay?” Scott asked.

“I… I don’t know,” Stiles replied.

The more he thought, though, the more he decided that wasn’t it. His relationship with Lydia  _had_  changed. It was evident to anyone that she paid attention to him, that he didn’t see her as some prize to be won. They were friends, that was true. They spent time together and could make each other laugh and relied on each other. And there were deeper feelings there. He counted her as a best friend. He wanted to protect her from anything that could hurt her. And, he suspected, Scott felt the same way. Lydia had been hurt so much,  _too much_ , in her life by everyone around her. They should have been there to protect her, should have been there to help her after Allison died. They both saw what she went through. They both wanted to help. They both didn’t. What each of them felt was linked, obviously. Scott wanted the best for Lydia. Scott respected Lydia.  But where Scott was her alpha, her brother, and the only person in the world who knew what it was like to be forcibly tethered to Peter, Stiles’ feelings were different.

Stiles  _loved_  Lydia.

And she was gone.

A tear rolled down his cheek and Stiles ripped his eyes away from Lydia’s picture. His room swam, the familiar colors and shapes distorted by water.  _He loved her_. In ways so different than what he initially ascribed to love. He thought about her and wanted to make her laugh and hug her and hold her. It wasn’t about dating  _Lydia Martin_ , the girl he’d had a crush on since he was three, but loving Lydia, his friend and his ally, with all of her faults and all of her baggage and all of her ideas and everything, everything she was. He should have been there for her, even when she pushed him away. He should never have let her distance herself so much from them. He knew that it had to hurt after Allison died, but she shouldn’t have given up on her best friends. She shouldn’t have pushed him away. He should have held her close to him and told her, point blank, he would be there for her. And he knew she didn’t feel the same way, she never had, but that didn’t matter. Loving someone meant supporting them and doing what was best for them. And having friends who knew her and could read her in ways that only he and Allison could (or, only he could, now) would have helped her. He looked up at Scott and his face contorted, his nose scrunched and his forehead lined. Scott was looking at him, sympathy and understanding evident on his face, and Stiles felt his chest seize up. “I let her down, Scott,” Stiles said suddenly. “I... I let her down.”

Tears dripped from his eyes down to his chin, and Stiles wanted nothing more than to just stop. To stop crying and to get himself under control, to stop being useless and start being proactive. For the past three weeks, he had been so useless. He had been so worried about Lydia, and tried so hard to hide it from everyone else for no reason whatsoever (or there was a reason, and he didn’t want to admit it to himself). He had been so worried that he blinded himself.

“We all did,” Scott said quietly. “Not just you.”

“No. No, I should have been there for her. After Allison, after Aiden… I…I should have stepped up and made sure she was okay,” he said. “God, it’s like I’ve had my head up my ass these past few months, you know?” Stiles wiped away his tears with the back of his hand. If he didn’t concentrate on the tears, he thought, maybe it wouldn’t seem so hopeless. He ran his tongue over his lips and squinted, trying to act normal. His face felt like it was twitching uncontrollably. “I haven’t even cried yet. One of my best friends has gone missing and possibly died, and none of us have cried. What kind of life do we lead that Lydia’s kidnapping is that far removed from our emotional lives?”

Scott stayed quiet for a few moments. He let his arm drop from Stiles’ back. “I did,” Scott said. Stiles looked over at him, thoughts jarred and halted in his head. He assumed that Scott hadn’t cried since Allison died. Since her funeral. Even during the deadpool, when people were dying around them, Scott kept his emotions in check. “The day that I talked to Deaton, I cried,” he admitted.

“Why?”

“Chances are, Lydia was taken because banshees can resurrect people,” Scott said, and Stiles rolled his eyes. They knew that. They knew that before Scott sent him out of the room, despite his protests. That was one of the few things they  _did_  know about this case. And about Lydia. She can bring people back to life. “But, as it turns out, banshees can only bring people back to life who are in their pack. So either her kidnapper wants to bring her into their pack, or, and Deaton thinks this is the most likely case, they don’t know. Lydia probably wouldn’t survive another resurrection even if it was someone in my pack. For a stranger, it’s impossible. There’s a chance, if it’s Derek, but if it’s not, well.”

Stiles bit his lip. “So… so that means…”

“If we don’t find her in time she’s gonna die, for no reason whatsoever.”

Stiles’ head hit his hands. He thought back to the pointed look Deaton gave Scott, the one that tore his friend up so much that he wasn’t able to look Stiles in the eye afterward when he told him it meant nothing. “When you say it out loud, it sounds so much worse,” Stiles said. His brain couldn’t process it. When he imagined her dead before, he imagined someone else alive in her stead. A laugh bubbled up despite his anger, despite his sadness, despite him crying.  Of course it would happen to her. “Lydia being murdered to bring some asshole back, and it’s not even going to work. She’d be so pissed.”

Scott laughed. “She probably is pissed. Both at that asshole and us.”

“Well, she wouldn’t be wrong to be mad,” Stiles said.

They both fell backward onto Stiles’ bed in unison, unable to stop smiling even though the situation was dire. Even though they should be worried.  _Something_  stiles thought,  _was definitely wrong with them_. Just like old times.

“Do you mind if I stay here tonight?” Scott asked.

Stiles shook his head. “Not at all.”

“Good, because I already told Isaac to pick both of us up here.”

His eyes closed, and Stiles pictured Lydia sitting in the room with them, rolling her eyes. She would tell them they were emotionally stunted, that the whiplash between their emotions was overwhelming. But she would be laughing, too. He pictured her smiling at him, and he sighed. They were going to get her back. They had to. 

* * *

 

Malia sat on the edge of Kira’s bed. It was comfortable and much cleaner than Stiles’ bed, but it didn’t have the same smell or worn-in feeling. Not that she minded, really—she knew it was more of a preference for who was in the bed with her than the bed itself—but she couldn’t stop comparing them. She liked the color of Kira’s sheets better though. She had decided that on the first night she stayed over. Maybe her favorite color was purple, then. She had always assumed it was red, like Stiles’ favorite color, but maybe it was purple.

“Are you ready for school?” Kira said as she walked into her room. She had been in the bathroom. It took her an awfully long time to get ready in the mornings, Malia decided. She usually just showered at night and threw on clothes from the collection of stuff Lydia had given her in the morning. The clothes fit Malia pretty well, and she asked Kira why Lydia had boxes of clothes that were too big for her, only to find out they belonged to Allison. Which sucked, kind of, because Scott would always look at Malia with sad eyes when she wore something too obviously Allison’s, but Malia didn’t know what good clothes were. And Lydia said Allison had fashion sense.

She looked at Kira, who was smiling as she held different tops up to her torso, trying to pick the best one. Her dad walked by her room and peeked in, nodding to himself as he saw the girls getting ready. Malia watched him walk down the hallway and listened until she was sure he was out of earshot. “How long do we have?”

Kira pulled one of the tops on quickly. “Jordan said that he could get us in at about 8 a.m. Mr. Stilinski would be heading home to get some rest after a night shift, so no one would know except him and us. Unless,” Kira said, pausing. “Unless you told Stiles?”

She looked at her best friend in the mirror as Kira hastily applied some make-up. If they didn’t have to convince her parents, Malia was sure Kira wouldn’t bother. Kira seemed to think make-up was a necessary hassle. Malia, on the other hand, liked make-up. She remembered watching her mom put it on when she was younger and always wanting to curl her eyelashes just like her mom did. “No,” Malia said. “He and I haven’t been talking, really. At all. For the past couple of days.” Or weeks, really. Not since Lydia went missing. She didn’t blame Lydia, or anything. It wasn’t her fault that she was defenseless and went missing a lot. She didn’t ask to be kidnapped. Malia knew Kira had been worried that she wouldn’t care about Lydia going missing. She also knew her best friend thought she would only be more angry when Stiles seemed to avoid her pretty much directly after it happened.

And yeah, it sucked that Stiles was being an ass. She knew it wasn’t fair to her. But to hold that against Lydia wasn’t fair, either. Malia, after all, knew what it was like to be missing and wonder if anyone was going to come looking for you. She had felt that way as a coyote for about a year before she fully integrated into life in the wild. Eight year olds aren’t exactly accustomed to being left out in the wilderness without parents. And since everyone thought she was dead, no one came looking for her. At least with Lydia, they didn’t think she was dead. Scott and Stiles and everyone were determined to find her before she disappeared for good. “You didn’t tell Scott, did you?” Malia asked suddenly.

Kira paled. “No,” she said. Her voice was shaky; Malia could smell guilt, but not the guilt of lying to her friend. Kira wanted to tell Scott, but she didn’t. “I don’t think he would let us do it if he knew…”

“Don’t think he’ll let you do what?”

Both of the girls jumped slightly, surprised at being caught. Malia cursed herself for being so wrapped up in thought that she didn’t bother to listen for intruders. “Nothing,” Malia said, her eyes flashing to Ethan’s. He had been staying with the Yukimura's as well, sleeping in a guest room down the hall. Mr. Yukimura decided that since Ethan didn’t have a place to stay, their house would do. And he wasn’t going to take no for an answer.

Ethan slid his gaze from Malia to Kira. “Scott wouldn’t want you to be doing what, Kira?”

Direct eye contact and direct questions. Both of them were Kira’s weakness. She would cave quickly. Malia knew she wouldn’t last long. “We… We’re going to see someone,” Kira squeaked out, looking down. Ethan walked in and stood directly behind Kira. He crossed his arms over his chest. “Peter. We’re going to see Peter.”

“Kira!”

Kira spun and frowned at Malia, pleading for forgiveness. “I’m sorry! I know I’m a trickster but he asked me outright and I didn’t want to lie,” she said.

“You’re right. Scott definitely would not let you do that,” Ethan said. He took out his phone and flipped through it for a second. “Luckily, though, he is going to Eichen House this morning with Isaac, Chris, and Stiles. So he won’t even notice you’re gone.”

“Is he really?” Kira pulled out her phone too, checking something. Malia knew she didn’t have any messages. Scott would assume Stiles would tell her, and Stiles would be too preoccupied with the thought of Lydia to text Malia. “Oh, that’s perfect,” Kira said. “I was worried he was going to track me down if I wasn’t in class. And since we are getting back in time for history, my dad would have no idea unless Scott asked him. Which he would. I just know he would.”

Ethan smiled. “Great! So when are we heading out?”

Malia snorted and stood up. “We,” she said, motioning between her and Kira, “are going soon. You are not coming.” She walked over and stood next to Kira. She crossed her arms over her chest and raised an eyebrow, a move she had seen Lydia perform many times when she was just daring people to challenge her. She hoped she looked as imposing as Lydia usually did, though. For someone so small, she could strike fear into the hearts a lot of more powerful creatures.

“If you’re going to see Peter, I’m either coming with you or telling Mr. Yukimura. And Kira won’t be able to trick her dad if he knows the truth,” Ethan said.

Kira looked over at Malia, and Malia rolled her eyes. “Fine. I guess you can come.”

“Good, because you didn’t really have a choice.”

Malia huffed and dropped onto the bed. It was going to be an interesting morning. A few minutes later, Kira’s dad left for school, and they went down to the kitchen to eat breakfast. They had about twenty minutes to kill before they could leave and drive over to the clinic to meet Jordan. Peter was being held in a specialty cell in the animal clinic that only the Sheriff, Deputy Parrish, and Deaton had access to. So far, she had been unable to convince Mr. Stilinski or Mr. Deaton to let her see her biological father by herself. But the longer Lydia was gone, the weaker the resolve got to keep Peter hidden from the pack and Malia more specifically. Malia zeroed in on Parrish, and Kira was able to convince him to let them see Peter.

Kira picked up her keys. The sound drew Malia and Ethan’s attention, and they looked up at her. She shook the keys. “Shall we get going?” Kira asked. Malia picked up her jacket and walked toward her, the bowl and spoon from breakfast, as usual, forgotten on the table. Ethan sighed and grabbed it, putting his and hers in the sink, and they headed out the door together. The drive to the clinic was short.

She wasn’t sure what they were going to get out of Peter. If they could get anything out of him. She hoped that her connection to him would be enough, but the one time she had gone with Scott and Stiles and the rest of the pack, he had just laughed. He wasn’t interested in helping them, not then. But maybe, maybe if Scott and Stiles weren’t there, if it was just her and Kira and now Ethan, he would talk. Stiles was sure that Peter knew more about Lydia’s disappearance. If there was something bad in town, Stiles said, you can be sure it will trace back to Peter Hale somehow. Malia herself was suspicious, since Derek left right after he talked to Peter. She wished her cousin would have told her where he was going. She wished he would have trusted her for once.

When they pulled up to the clinic, Jordan was there. Since it was only eight, and the clinic wouldn’t open for another hour, they were the only cars in the lot. Malia hoped an hour would be enough.

“Are you guys ready?” the Deputy asked, looking between Kira, Malia, and Ethan.

Malia felt three pairs of eyes on her. Great. “Yeah. We’re ready,” she said. Jordan turned and Malia followed him, Kira and Ethan trailing behind her. She was ready. She felt ready.

Peter’s cell was behind the clinic, out of sight from any clients and far enough away from the animals that he couldn’t cause a problem. It looked like a shed, but inside, it was sectioned into two halves. One for people to stand, and one for supernatural creatures to sit. Jordan opened the door, and the pungent scent of mountain ash filled the air. Deaton must have put down a lot, she realized. It only smelled like this when there was a lot of it. She glanced a Kira, and motioned for her to stay behind. They had talked about this earlier. Malia wanted to talk to him alone, but if she needed anyone else, she would let Kira know.

The door shut behind her. Peter was watching her, his eyes never once leaving her as she walked into the small opening in front of his bars. He was sitting down, on the only bench in the cell. Malia watched him, too, trying to do what Stiles would do, what Derek would. They would look for tics, for changes in his mannerisms. Derek told her that it wasn’t impossible to figure out when Peter was lying, but it wasn’t easy. It was better just not to trust him. “Peter,” she said in way of a greeting.

“What, you’re not going to call me daddy? Peter’s a little informal for a parent, don’t you think?” he asked. She could hear the condescension in his voice. He was mocking her.

“I have a father,” she said plainly. “Just because you provided half of my genetic code doesn’t mean you’re my dad. You’re a criminal.” She crossed her arms over her chest. She wanted to look formidable in the face of what she was sure to be one manipulative statement after another. That, and she felt less exposed when her arms were crossed.

Peter laughed. He sounded so amused. She hated it. “Aw, has your little boyfriend been teaching you about biology? Has he told you they haven’t quite settled the nature vs. nurture debate yet? Because for all you know, you’re predisposed to be a criminal yourself.” Peter paused. He mimed stroking his chin. “Come to think of it, isn’t your adopted  _daddy_  a criminal too? He tried to  _kill_ you. Oh, darling, you’re just destined to be a baddie like me and your mother.”

She felt her nails involuntarily grow, piercing the skin of her forearms. Malia quickly uncrossed her arms, shaking her hands quickly to retract her claws. “My dad isn’t a criminal. He tried to kill a coyote that was on his property. He didn’t know any better. You, on the other hand, did try to kill me and everyone I care about. You knew what you were doing. All you care about is power. And I’m never going to forget it,” she said. “And for your information, Stiles wasn’t the one to tell me about genetics. Lydia was.”

He cocked his head quickly to the side, and a sick smile drew itself on his face. A light appeared in his eyes that hadn’t been there before, like he was excited for the first time since seeing his daughter walk through his prison door. He was intrigued. She watched him with disgust; just mentioning Lydia made him more interested, invested. His obsession with her was sad, in her opinion. Just some old man obsessed with a beautiful young girl. Stiles called him Humbert Humbert once, when he and Scott were talking about Peter and Lydia. She didn’t quite get the reference—it had something to do with a book—but she was sure it described him perfectly.

“Lydia,” he said almost dreamily. “How is our little banshee? Still missing, I hear. Unless you’ve come to tell me she’s been found?”

Peter shifted forward and supported his head in his hands, watching her. His fingers drummed on his chin, and Malia kept watching him. So far, all of his movements, except for the moment when she mentioned Lydia, were mocking. He was pretending to care about her questions, pretending to act natural. But really, he cared nothing about her. “She’s still missing,” Malia said, “and I think you know something about it.”

“Why on  _earth_  would you think that?”

Malia started pacing, her eyes never once leaving Peter. He was still sitting, his eyes watching her walk back and forth. “Derek left immediately after finding you. I think you told him where Lydia is and how to find her. And now Derek is gone, too,” she said.

“Derek found me exactly where you left me when you helped me escape,” Peter said. He was avoiding the question, she could tell.  “In fact, how strange is it that you can go from helping me escape your alpha, your boyfriend, and the little guard you’ve got stationed outside to interrogating me in just the span of two weeks. Are you having some guilt over it? Over doing the wrong thing?”

Malia stilled and narrowed her eyes. This time, when her claws came out, she didn’t bother trying to retract them. “I helped you because you promised me a favor,” she said. “You told me if I helped you avoid Scott when he came looking for me you would help me out. Well, I’m here to cash in my favor,” she told him. “Tell me where Lydia is.”

Again, Peter laughed. But this time, instead of sounding mockingly amused, he barked out loud laughs. They echoed throughout his jail cell, and didn’t stop for almost a full minute. He just kept laughing, and laughing, and Malia wanted to walk in and rip his throat out. “You believed me?” he said dubiously. “You actually believed me when I said I would owe you a favor? My, my, maybe the apple does fall far from the tree.”

“Of course I didn’t believe you,” she said hotly. She hadn’t. When he called her with his proposal, saying that he would owe her a favor if she helped him keep away from Scott and Stiles, she wanted to believe him. He told her that they were unfairly linking him to Lydia’s kidnapping, that he really had no idea. She, however, remembered the last time her biological father had given her advice. She remembered riding with him to Mexico, and how he told her not to hold back, because he knew that it was Scott. She realized after that trip that Peter cared about nothing other than himself and the few people that intrigued him. He cared about Derek and Lydia about as much as he could care about a person, and that left him with very little to devote to her. “But I wanted to give you the benefit of the doubt. See if you could rise to the occasion. Because if you don’t tell us where she is, Lydia is going to die. If she isn’t already dead. Which, given your fascination with her, doesn’t seem to be something you would want.” She spit out the last few words, glaring at him with narrowed eyes.

He stood up rather abruptly. Peter started walking, pacing around the cell, and Malia watched him. She hadn’t expected to strike a cord, but apparently she had. He wasn’t looking at her anymore, instead just walking. “Trying to scare me, are you?” he said. He still wasn’t making eye contact, which was a direct departure from his earlier behavior. “Why do you want to find her, anyway? You know the second she comes back into your life, you’re going to lose him.”

Malia immediately thought of Stiles. That had to be who Peter was talking about, the only  _he_  she and Lydia had in common, really. She wasn’t dumb. She had seen the way he looked the past few weeks, how tortured he was. “I don’t know what you’re talking about,” she said.

“Don’t play dumb with me!” He was facing her now, staring at her. Malia took a step back involuntarily. “You know that he loves her. You can smell it on him. He’s human, it’s hard for him to hide his scent, even if your sense of smell isn’t quite as  _refined_  as that of a wolf. You know I’m right, my little coyote. So why are you so determined to find her and save her before her time is up? You want him to choose you? He won’t. If it came down to her life and yours, Stiles will choose Lydia every time.” He paused, coming closer to the mountain ash and bars that separated him from the outside world. “Every single one of them would. It would be better for you to just let her die, Malia,” Peter said.

Malia’s eyes turned bright blue, and she bared her fangs at him. Her anger was overcoming her sense, her emotions taking over her rationality. She knew he wasn’t right; the pack cared about her just as much as they cared about Lydia. But she also knew that Peter was right about Stiles, as much as she didn’t want him to be. She knew that his guilt wasn’t solely because he hadn’t noticed Lydia was missing. She’d seen the way Stiles would look at Lydia whenever they were around each other. She had tried to ignore it, tried to tell herself it didn’t matter, but it was hard to pretend. “I don’t care,” she growled. “She’s my pack, and I’m learning not to leave them behind.”

“So that is it, then? You want to prove yourself to the pack? Show them that you matter? Do you feel inadequate?” He had stopped walking, and was standing as close to the bars as he could get. His eyes were blue, too. He was trying to intimidate her.

She growled back at him, taking a few steps forward to get as close as she could to the bars as well. Her teeth were bared at him and her claws were extended. “I have nothing to prove,” she said. “I want to help my pack and my boyfriend save my friend. That’s all.”

“Then you’re even dumber than I thought you were,” Peter said harshly, glaring down at her. “You’re a pitiful waste of my genetic code, and if there was a way I could sacrifice you to get what I wanted instead of Lydia, I would have done it.”

Malia howled loudly and dug her claws into the mystical barrier separating her from Peter’s throat. “I will kill you!” she shouted, trying to force her way through mountain ash. He had sacrificed Lydia. He admitted it. He knew what he had done.

A strong pair of arms looped around hers and pulled her back as Peter started laughing again. Malia jerked her head back and saw Ethan behind her, carefully avoiding her sharp claws as he moved her out of the shed. Malia could barely concentrate on anything. All she could hear was the roar of anger in her head. All she could see was hazy shapes. She wanted to shift into a coyote and tear Peter apart with her teeth. She wanted to feel his flesh give way to her claws. But she couldn’t. If she shifted, she might never be able to come back. And as crazy as her life was, it was better to have friends and family than to be alone in the woods.

“You’re okay, you’re okay, you’re okay.” Kira’s chanting voice came over the roar, and Malia looked up. Kira was standing above her. She looked concerned. Malia wondered why Kira was so tall, and then realized she must have collapsed on the ground in an effort to hold her anger back. Either that, or she really was on the brink of fully shifting and dropped to all fours to make it easier. She’d had dreams before where that happened. She would be at school and instead of going to class, she would just drop to her knees and transform. She blinked a few times, adjusting herself, trying to stop the anger.

She unclenched her hand and saw that her claws were digging into someone else’s hand. Malia jerked her head to the side and saw Ethan sitting beside her, his hand grasped tightly around hers. “I’m sorry,” she said quickly, and pulled her hand away. Her claws had pierced his hand and he was bleeding over the leaves on the ground.

“Don’t worry about it,” he said. “I’ll heal. I just wanted to make sure you were okay.”

Malia took a few deep breaths, thinking about the exercises Stiles had taught her to control her impulses and her shifts. She needed to bring herself back to the present. She needed to concentrate on what was happening and ignore the urges. Malia took another deep breath, and felt her fangs retract and her claws shrink. He looked up and Kira held out her hand, and Malia took it, bringing herself to her feet.

Kira and Ethan were looking at her. They were both concerned. “I’m fine,” Malia said. “He just makes me really angry sometimes.” She looked at Ethan. “You heard everything we said, didn’t you?” It wasn’t an accusation, just a question.

Ethan nodded. “I was listening. Peter can be an asshole. Don’t take what he said about the pack or the stuff about… about Stiles and Lydia to heart.”

Kira looked from Ethan to Malia quickly, her eyebrows scrunching together. Malia ignored her questioning look. They would talk later. “It’s fine,” she said. She knew it wasn’t, and they both knew it wasn’t, but Malia had heard those words enough to know that saying something was fine was a good way to let other people know it wasn’t but not to press. “I just… You know that I helped him get away. I just wanted to say I’m sorry, and it was stupid of me to do it. If you want to tell Scott, you can.”

Ethan looked her in the eye. “I’m not going to,” he said. “You made a call to help him in exchange for a favor. It wasn’t a bad one.”

“Yeah, but it didn’t work,” she said. “He got away, and he didn’t actually tell me anything we couldn’t guess. I knew I shouldn’t have bothered.” They were all silent for a second. She was right, she knew. She had screwed up on the chance that Peter cared about her a little bit. All this did was prove that Peter cared for no one other than himself. And it confirmed that he did have something to do with Lydia’s disappearance.

Someone cleared their throat, and Malia turned. Jordan stood behind them, a small grin on his face. “I wouldn’t say it was a total bust. He said that if we haven’t found Lydia by the 29th, that he would tell Scott where she was,” Jordan told them. “I think that was his way of apologizing, not that it matters. And anyway, Derek found Peter and put him back into custody. So really, he didn’t get away and he’s going to help us.”

Malia smiled to herself. She didn’t care that Peter was trying to apologize, if that was even an apology. She didn’t think it was; she figured it had something to do with whatever twisted plan he had concocted in the first place. But he had given in to her favor, had let them know that he knew where Lydia was. She figured this was his way of manipulating her. He would make her think he cared. Little did he know, she hadn’t let him get away. She called Derek the moment she was out of earshot, telling him where she had left Peter and for what. She may not have let her alpha in on her secret, but she found that her cousin could read her pretty easily. “Derek finding Peter wasn’t exactly chance,” she said.

Jordan laughed. “I didn’t think it was.”

Without a single glance backward, Malia followed Kira to her car. Her business with Peter was done. 

* * *

“What do you think Chris did to get access?” Stiles asked for the umpteenth time, looking between Isaac and Scott. “He’s been gone for like, two weeks.” Scott resisted every urge to lock him in Mr. Argent’s car for the duration of their visit. He loved Stiles, he did; they were practically  _brothers_. But that didn’t stop Stiles from driving Scott mad when he was nervous or desperate or just overly hyperactive in any way, shape, or form. Which, ever since Scott jumped through his window last night, he had been. Not that Scott could blame him; finally finding something out about Lydia was going to feel good. And it was hard to think of anything else when the answers to their questions could be right in their grasp. For all they knew, Meredith would be able to contact Lydia and Lydia could tell them exactly where she was. Scott looked back at the door to Eichen House, his fingers drumming on his leg. Mr. Argent had been in there a long time, and Scott wondered if there was some problem processing their request. If they wouldn’t be able to see Meredith today.

Isaac rolled his eyes and then glanced over at Scott, who was trying to look anywhere but at the two people bickering in front of him. They had fought the entire drive up, each one making a sarcastic dig at the other in regards to the offense that had just been thrown at them, until Mr. Argent threatened to dismember both of them if they didn’t shut up. The threat of never having children apparently was enough to force them into civility until Chris disappeared, and Scott wished his threats to dismember them had been taken half as seriously. It was a constant stream of annoyances, and Scott had wished that he had actually ridden his bike instead of leaving it behind and riding in the SUV. He just wanted quiet. They were about to stroll into some building and talk to a girl who had started a list to kill them, a girl who was obviously in need of help, to demand that she contact the friend they were too stupid to find. He was nervous. He didn’t want to be insensitive or mean to Meredith, but he also wanted to make sure Lydia was okay; with every beat of his beat and breath of his lungs, Scott wanted to make sure that Lydia was okay and still alive and would be able to be rescued. Because there was only so much he could bring her back from, and he was worried—though he would never say it out loud, since Stiles was on the verge of breaking down already—that they might not find her in time.

“Why did we bring him along?” Isaac asked Scott, obviously ignoring Stiles’ question. “What use does he have, other than being an ass, ignoring his friends, and trying his best to put the blame on literally everyone else except him?”

“We brought him along because he wouldn’t stay behind,” Scott said. He glanced over at Stiles, who was sneering at the back of Isaac's head and muttering words under his breath that both Scott and Isaac could easily hear, things about  _can’t wait until you leave_  and  _which one of us is an ass_. “And what Mr. Argent had to do to get us access doesn’t matter. All that matters is he got it, and we will be able to see Meredith.” They had been trying, unsuccessfully, to meet with Meredith, but no amount of persuasion could convince the people at Eichen House to let a bunch of teenagers talk to another, mentally unstable teenager. Mr. Argent came in when he heard of their trouble and struck some kind of deal with the director; Scott imagined it had to do with exchanging a potentially dangerous supernatural creature for access. Deaton had done the same at one point, or so he hinted a few days ago when Scott wondered out loud what Mr. Argent had been up to. He told Scott that the director took more kindly to requests when his cells were full.

The doors to Eichen House opened, and Chris stepped out with the director not far behind. He nodded in Scott’s direction, and Scott breathed a sigh of relief. It had worked. Whatever person Chris had tracked down and handed over to the care of the home had been enough for them to get to Meredith. Which meant that, for the first time since she had disappeared, he would be able to find out if Lydia was alive. Isaac heard him and turned as well, which caused Stiles to follow suit. A relieved grin broke out on Stiles’ face. “Oh, thank god. Now Meredith can give us some kind of an answer,” Stiles said, moving forward.

Scott caught him by the arm quickly. “Hold up, both of you,” he said. Stiles turned and Isaac glanced back. Scott looked at him for a brief second, trying to tell him that his warning wasn’t for Isaac, before looking at Stiles. “I get that this is important. I want answers about Lydia just as much as you do. But Meredith is sick and in the process of healing. If you start yelling at her or demanding things from her that she is not comfortable with, even if you think it is a perfectly reasonable request, I will make you leave.” Scott looked at Stiles fully, his eyes never once leaving his best friend’s. “The last time you were here, you and Lydia upset her so much she screamed. I want to find Lydia, but I also don’t want to see Meredith hurt. Are we clear?”

Stiles looked away and the tips of his ears turned slightly red. Scott wouldn’t have said anything if he didn’t feel it was completely necessary, but he knew that Stiles was anxious to find Lydia and make sure she was okay. Which meant he was likely to start yelling and glaring. They were all anxious to ensure Lydia’s safety. It didn’t give them a right to be assholes to Meredith. “I asked you if you understood me, Stiles. I won’t let you in if you don’t agree.” He was trying to be nice, but there was a sharp edge to his voice. Meredith might not have been pack, but Scott wanted to keep her safe, too. She deserved whatever protection he could give her. She, after all, couldn’t protect herself. And what was it that Allison had said?

“You’re my best friend, Scott, not my father,” Stiles said. His voice was low, and his glare informed Scott that Stiles felt he stepped over some line. But Scott didn’t let go of his arm or tear his eyes away from Stiles. Scott heard Stiles’ heartbeat pick up the longer they stared at each other, and finally Stiles looked down. His ears were completely flushed now. “But yeah, I understand.”

Scott let go of Stiles’ arm and grinned. “Good. Now let’s go talk to Meredith.”

The three of them moved in unison toward the door. Scott walked behind his two friends, watching both of them as they walked past the gates and into Eichen House. How weird it was, he thought, to see them both together after being apart for so long. Stiles and Isaac had never been close, nor did they particularly  _want_  to be good friends. Even when they were part of the same pack and seeing each other every day, they fought and argued and generally avoided one another. He had been sure, when Isaac followed Chris onto a plane to France, that Stiles and Isaac would never see each other again. He even doubted he would see Isaac again, even though they had lived under the same roof for so many months. Weeks ago, he had been proven wrong on both counts. Even though Isaac had been wrecked after Allison died, he came back to Beacon Hills. And even though they could barely stand to be in the same room, Isaac and Stiles had come together to try and save someone who was dear to them. Now, they were both walking into a place where their lives had been changed forever; the place where Stiles had been possessed and the place where Allison died, where the Nogitsune killed her.

That, he guessed, was the best way to sum up Lydia’s connection to her friends and her importance to the pack. Each one of them was walking into a place where they had lost parts of themselves in order to get back someone who meant so much to them in different ways. For Isaac, she was one of the only people in the world who felt the loss of Allison like he did, who knew what it was like to have Allison die to save them. He knew both Isaac and Lydia felt like Allison gave her life for them, and they had both told him, on separate occasions, that they would never stop feeling guilty. Scott caught Chris’s eye as he crossed the threshold into Eichen House, and felt a similar pull for Chris. He was here because his daughter’s best friend, the one girl in the world he had come to love nearly as much as his own, was in danger of following her best friend the place that all the women he cared about seemed to end up. Scott wondered how Mr. Argent must have felt when he got the call that Lydia was gone; they had been working together to improve her self-defense, but with his constant travelling it hadn’t been much. He must have felt somewhat responsible for Lydia. Just like they all did.

And Stiles… Scott watched his best friend pause for a moment in the waiting room of the institution that tore him apart. He had been here before, with Lydia by his side, but they both had come back visibly changed by it. Neither one had spoken about what happened the night they discovered that Meredith was the benefactor. Now, he was coming back to a place where bad things just kept happening, and Scott was amazed at what Stiles would do for Lydia. He was amazed at what they all would do for Lydia.

He followed the three men into a hallway that led to a room, and inside the room sat four chairs and a very nervous Meredith. Scott smiled and took the seat right in front of her. Her eyes were immediately drawn to him, and he couldn’t help but smile wider. “Hi, Meredith,” he said. Stiles sat to the left of him and Isaac took the seat on his right. Meredith looked over at Isaac and smiled for the first time. She waved at him slightly, and Isaac smiled back. Chris opted not to take a seat, instead standing away from the group in a corner by an orderly. “How are you doing?”

Meredith looked back at him and tipped her head to the side slightly. “Pretty well,” she said. She seemed surprised that he was asking her anything that didn’t have to do with Lydia. Scott was ashamed that she expected them to get straight to business, that she didn’t think they would care enough about her to make sure she was okay before they took advantage of her abilities. Just like Lydia, he thought. They were always demanding that she help without actually making sure she was okay enough to do it.

In one swift motion, Stiles took out his phone and shoved it toward her, shaking it at her when she didn’t immediately take it. “You need one, right? To do your thing where you contact Lydia?”

Her eyes went wide, and she looked between the phone and Scott, distressed. “Dude,” Scott admonished lightly. Meredith was obviously uncomfortable. He didn’t know if it was something about the phone, something about Stiles, or both.

Stiles glared at Scott. “What? She needs a phone to hear the voices. So here’s the phone. Commence with the voices,” Stiles said sharply.

“I… I don’t want that phone,” she said, staring down at it. “It’s not going to help me.”

“What’s that supposed to mean? It’s a phone. They’re all the same!”

Scott shot Stiles another warning glace. He could sense Stiles’ own anxiety, could smell the sweat from Stiles’ palms building up and could hear the way his heart beat faster and faster, trying to keep up with his high level of distress. Stiles wanted answers. He needed answers.

Meredith looked at Scott, still wide eyed. “I would like your phone, please,” she said.

He nodded and pulled it out. She took it in her hands and smiled, slightly. “I like your phone,” she said, flipping it over in her hands. “I think it suits you better than it suited its previous owner.”

Scott stared at her for a second. He wondered how she knew that his phone had belonged to Derek before he gave it to Scott; Kate had smashed Scott’s before turning him into a Berserker, and when he couldn’t afford a new one, Derek gave Scott his and bought a new one. Derek had said it was to replace the one he smashed when trying to train Scott to be a werewolf. Scott had just been so grateful he wouldn’t have to beg his dad for a phone that he didn’t care what the reason was. Meredith looked at it for a second, and then looked at Scott, before putting the phone to hear ear.

They all waited, barely breathing, for her to say something. Meredith just stared off into space for a few moments, as if listening to the world around them, like she was tapping into some current just outside of their range. And, he supposed, she was.

“She’s been dreaming about all of you,” Meredith said finally. “Although they are very different dreams.”

Relief washed over him in waves, slowly washing away every ounce of dread that had built in him since the moment he realized Lydia was gone. She was alive. If Meredith could hear her, if she was dreaming, then she was alive. Lydia was alive. Scott could almost feel a weight fall off of his shoulders, a weight that he didn’t want to believe he was carrying. He had thought she was alive, but hadn’t been able to prove that his gut feeling was anything more than wishful thinking. He couldn’t think it enough times for his own satisfaction. The words that had become nothing more than placating words, a chant to keep him going, were now an affirmation. Lydia was alive. He could find her in time. He could  _save_  her.

“What do you mean she’s been dreaming about us?” Stiles asked. “Where is she? Can you give us anything else than that? Or are we just supposed to be happy with the knowledge that wherever she is, wherever Lydia has been taken, she can still dream? Come on, Meredith! You know we need more than that!” His voice got louder with every word.

Meredith let out a pitiful moan and cowered away from Stiles. She still had the phone up to her ear but she couldn’t look at them, wouldn’t look at them. Scott turned toward Stiles suddenly, his eyes red. “Stiles,” he said. Stiles glanced over at his friend and frowned. He couldn’t look directly into Scott’s eyes, not when they were this color.

“Sorry, Scott. I just, I want to know where she is. Meredith, I’m sorry.”

Meredith glanced up again, her wide eyes watching Scott instead of anyone else. He smiled at her again. He hoped his smile was encouraging, even if he was still so pissed at Stiles his eyes wouldn’t go back to their normal color. It was weird, he thought, how he could tell what color his eyes were by the way the world looked. The way that the supernatural swirled around him, how small details were heightened. Meredith nodded at him, and closed her eyes. She concentrated on the phone, leaning her cheek on it’s glass surface. “Derek is with her,” she said slowly. “He found her. She says he’s not doing so well, but she thinks she can help him. She says not to come looking for him until Halloween.”

“What does that mean?” Stiles asked. “Can you talk to her? Ask her what the hell she is thinking!” His voice echoed throughout the concrete room and he jumped up, his feet hitting loudly against the floor. He was angry. Scott could smell it on him. He understood why; Lydia had basically told them to leave her alone, and the last time she had given that warning, she had been in mortal danger. Ready to sacrifice herself to save someone. Meredith jerked her head toward Stiles and winced. She was shaking.

Stiles reached out his hand, but Scott caught his hand before he could get near to Meredith. “I warned you,” Scott said quietly. “Isaac, could you please take him out of here?”

“That’s not fair, Scott. I just want to make sure she is okay and that she isn’t planning on doing something stupid before I can… before we can find her,” Stiles said defensively. His voice was higher than usual, faster than normal, and his free hand danced against his leg. It was one of the many tells that Stiles was brimming with energy; he couldn’t keep still, even when he tried to be forceful.

Isaac grabbed Stiles’ other arm, and looked at Scott. He was waiting for a decision. “I know, but Meredith isn’t here to answer all of your questions just because you have them. You made her uncomfortable. You’re going to have to leave. I’m sorry, Stiles.” Stiles’ nostrils flared, but Isaac didn’t give him the chance to respond. He roughly pulled Stiles out of the room, not even letting him fight. The power of a werewolf, Scott thought. Stiles looked like he wanted to rip Isaac’s hear out by the roots, but Isaac just dragged him along.

Scott turned back to Meredith. she still looked visibly shaken; he eyes were wide and she was chewing harshly on her lip, nearly making it bleed with the force of her bite. She was watching the two boys leave the room. “I’m sorry about that, Meredith. Stiles was out of line.”

Her eyes glided back to Scott’s, and she shrugged. It was jerky, segmented, filled with nervous energy.  Scott could smell the fear and worry on her. He wasn’t quite sure what she was afraid of, but with every step Stiles took away from her, her fear lessened.“He’s just worried about her,” Meredith said. She clutched his phone in a hand hanging by her waist.“He’s in love with her, I think. He has been for a while.”

“That doesn’t give him the right to treat you badly, though,” Scott said. “We’re all worried about her. It’s not your fault that we can’t find her.”

She smiled quickly. “You’re right,” she said with a small shrug of her shoulders. Without Stiles and Isaac here, her eyes drifted around the room freely. Stiles put her on edge. But now that it was just him in front of her and two other people in the room, she felt more comfortable. “You know, the last time he was here, I thought he was going to kill someone with his bare hands for her,” Meredith said. “I knew Brunski was going to die and I thought it was going to be because Stiles killed him.”

“I don’t know that Stiles could kill anyone,” Scott said kindly. He looked down at his hands. “He might have been angry enough to want to kill Brunski, but there is a big difference between wanting to kill someone and doing it.” His best friend was emotional and sometimes unpredictable, but he wasn’t a murderer. He didn’t have that darkness in him, not anymore.

Meredith clicked her tongue lightly. “You’d be surprised what love can make people do,” she said.

He looked up at her sharply. “What do you mean?” he asked. “Is he planning something? Can you tell me what it is?”

She shied away from him and froze. She seemed like she was shutting down, and Scott felt immediately guilty for his quick response. “There is a decision you will have to make, Scott,” she said quietly. “I don’t know what it is, but I know it has to do with death and Stiles, and it’s coming soon. I can sense it on him.”

He fell silent, and she watched him impassively, not moving. He sighed, and then nodded. If that was all she could give him, then that was all he was going to get. Scott reached out and touched her lightly, trying to put as much comfort as he could muster in one simple touch. Meredith shivered a little, but she smiled again, her shoulders losing some tension as he pulled his hand away. She shifted the phone a little bit, pulling her legs up to her chest so she was curled up in the chair.

He noticed, not for the first time, just how much Meredith moved around. When she was relaxed, her movements increased, like she was just on the brink of finding a comfortable place to exist in this world. “It’s nice to see you again, Meredith,” Scott said. “I’m sorry that the first time I’ve come to see you in here was to ask you to help me. That’s not exactly fair or right.”

She shrugged. “That isn’t your fault. I haven’t been allowed many visitors since my last… escape. Just Lydia.”

“Lydia came to see you?” Scott asked. He hadn’t know that Lydia had been to Eichen House, or that she had been allowed to see Meredith. Scott wondered how Lydia had gotten permission to see Meredith, considering how long it took them to get in.

Meredith nodded. “Just the once. It was part of my rehab. I was allowed one visitor last month, and I asked Lydia if she would come. I… I wanted to say sorry. She apologized, too. She gave me my dog back.” Meredith smiled and let her feet drop to the floor, instead wrapping her arms around her torso. Her right hand touched the fabric of her shirt over her heart. “She is too nice to me for all the trouble I caused you guys.”

Scott looked Meredith in the eye. “It’s not your fault,” he said sincerely. It wasn’t. Meredith was as much of a victim as any of them. And she had tried to protect them, in her own way, by making them worth more. She had tried to keep them safe in the only way she could think to do so. “Anyone would go crazy listening to Peter talk for five minutes, let alone days.” He raised his eyebrows at her and grinned. Meredith smiled slightly wider, and he wondered if this was as close as she got to laughing. He had never seen her laugh, but then again, he hadn’t spent much time with her even though his pack relied pretty heavily on whatever information she could give them.

“You know, she was right about you,” Meredith said. “Lydia told me once that not all monsters do monsterous things. When I asked her who, she said you. She has a lot of faith in you. You’re a good alpha, Scott. And a good… person.”

“Not as good as Lydia,” he said quickly. He paused for a second, thinking about it. It was true. There were so many times that he made the wrong decision, but he was hard pressed to think of a time, since Lydia was thrown into the world of the supernatural, that she had chosen the worst outcome. That she had put her friends in danger willingly. Lydia doubted herself so often, but she never once doubted him. Not anymore. If only she could place that amount of faith in herself. “Not all monsters do monsterous things? I like that.”

Meredith opened her mouth, but no sound came out. Her arms untangled themselves from her torso and her left arm lifted. Her attention was on the phone pressed to her ear. She squinted, like she didn’t quite understand what was happening, and then frowned. Scott just watched her work, and wondered if it was this way for Lydia, or if different banshees processed voices in different ways. Meredith only seemed to hear the spirits through the phone, but Lydia could hear them around her without a receptor. He wondered if that made it worse. Meredith slid the phone down, and it hung next to her waist again. Her eyes swiveled toward Scott and she looked like she was going to cry. “She says... not to come looking for her. She says…she says if you do, you’re going to die.” Her voice cracked, even though it was lower and quieter than it had been through their whole meeting. She was sad. “I can see it around you, too. You’re safer if you don’t go looking for her, Scott McCall.”

He smiled to himself, and his head dropped into his hands. He knew the warning was important, but the threat of his own death was outweighed by the idea of Lydia being safe, of finding her and ensuring she would be okay. If he had to die to make sure she was okay, he was fine with that. And, he figured, Lydia felt the same way, which is why she was sending a warning to him. Even when kidnapped, Lydia was thinking about other people. She wanted him to be safe more than she wanted to be rescued. How had he found heroes in all of his friends? “Tell her there isn’t a chance in hell I am going to leave her behind.”

“She was worried you would say that,” Meredith said quietly. She pulled the phone away from her ear and handed it back to him. Scott took it without speaking. “She told me to beg you not to come for her.”

He shrugged and put the phone back in his pocket. “That’s not going to happen. I’m going to get her back.”

Scott stood, and thanked Meredith again. She smiled sadly at him, and he told her that, if he did end up making it, he would like to come and visit her with Lydia next time, if that was okay. Meredith just nodded.

Chris walked out of the room a few paces ahead of Scott. His mind was wrapped up in the warning Lydia had given him.  _He was going to die if he came looking for her_. Could she be wrong? She sensed that Derek was going to die, but he didn’t. He just changed. He, however, was not Derek, probably wouldn’t ‘evolve’, and surely was in mortal danger. But he couldn’t just leave her to die by herself.

“Scott?”

He turned. Meredith was standing, now, and the orderly was watching her impassively. “Yeah?”

“Her voice,” Meredith said. “It was stronger. Louder. That… That only happens when a banshee is close to death. It’s making her more powerful, but it’s not… good. If you don’t get to her soon, she might be lost. Even if she isn’t sacrificed.”

Meredith turned and followed the orderly out of the room. 

* * *

 

Hundreds of miles away, Lydia Martin started crying. 

* * *

 

Once out of the room, Stiles jerked his arm out of Isaac’s grasp. “There was no need to be that forceful, Isaac,” Stiles said stiffly. “I am perfectly capable of walking myself out of a room.”

“Really?” Isaac snorted. “You could have fooled me. You were putting up a fight the whole way out of there.”

Stiles glared at him. “I was not.”

Isaac sneered at him and shook his head, blonde curls moving back and forth slightly from the motion. “You’re seriously going to pick a fight about you putting up a fight over being kicked out from the banshee room? What the hell is your problem, man?”

“I just wanted answers about Lydia, alright? I just wanted to know that she was alive and okay and wasn’t planning on doing something stupid, something suicidal,” Stiles said. His voice got louder with each progressive word, and he kept moving closer to Isaac. “But  _Scott_ ,” he said, jabbing Isaac in the chest, “had to have his little lackey throw me out because I made the crazy girl feel bad.”

In a flash, Isaac grabbed Stiles’ finger. He was taller than Stiles by a few inches, and when he wanted to, could be imposing. Isaac glared down at Stiles, his eyes glowing gold. “First of all, don’t call Meredith crazy. It is not her fault you’re acting like an ass,” his voice came out in a threatening growl, and Stiles could see the fangs bared in his mouth.  He was too angry to be scared, but a warning voice in the back of his head that sounded suspiciously like Scott was telling him to stop pissing the werewolf off. When had his conscience started sounding like Scott? Actually, scratch that. It had probably always sounded like Scott. Scott was nice, but easy to ignore when Stiles felt like it, just like his conscience. “Second, Scott gave you a warning. You upset the  _one person_  who can actually make sure Lydia is alive and tell Lydia we are looking for her. You deserved to be thrown out. You didn’t even need to be here.”

Isaac pushed past Stiles and bumped his shoulder, hard, before walking outside. His shoulder howled in pain from the werewolf hit, and he rubbed it; he wasn’t quite sure why he thought rubbing it would ease the pain, but it seemed like the thing to do. Stiles fumed for a second, and then stormed out after him, barely taking note of the change in temperature from Eichen House to the outside world. Isaac was standing with his back to Stiles, looking out at the surrounding cars and trees, the only things within miles. Stiles marched up to him, his feet thudding loudly on the pavement. He grabbed Isaac’s arm and pulled, trying to jerk his body around to face Stiles.

“I didn’t even need to be here?” Stiles said. “Me? You’re only here because of Argent. Because of Scott, even. You don’t care about Lydia.  _I_ care about Lydia. Scott cares about Lydia. You two aren’t even friends, Lahey.”

Whatever he was expecting, Isaac turning and cocking his head to the side was not it. “I don’t care about her? Really? That’s your angle? Lydia is my friend, Stiles.”

Stiles snorted. “Since when?”

“Since we both lost Allison. Since she called me, crying, about a month after Allison’s funeral when she ended up at her grave and everyone else was at the bowling alley,” Isaac said. Stiles winced; he remembered that night. Derek brought her home and wouldn’t speak to them for a week afterward. The only thing he would say to either Scott or Stiles was that it was a good thing he was able to get there. She had called Stiles that night, but he hadn’t picked up. He didn’t think… he didn’t think it was important. “Since she was put on a dead pool started by the only person who could help her control her abilities and she couldn’t handle it. I’ve been there for Lydia in every way that I could, but I wasn’t in Beacon Hills. We may not have been great friends before, but she knows what it’s like… she knows what I’ve been going through.”

Isaac stopped and look down for a second, before lifting his head and raising his eyebrows. “In fact,” he said, “I would say that you don’t really care about her. From what I hear, you two don’t even talk anymore.”

Stiles backed up from Isaac, his eyes looking anywhere but at the werewolf’s face. He couldn’t refute it, not really; what could he say? That these past few months were just natural, that Lydia was blowing things out of proportion, that they did talk? Every single one of those were lies. He barely knew Lydia was still suffering from losing her best friend. He didn’t realize she was tutoring people, that she was keeping such close contact with Isaac and Ethan, that she made sure Liam and Parrish felt accepted in the supernatural world. Stiles fidgeted nervously, his hand kneading the fabric on his thigh to try and rid his palm of the cold, guilty sweat that popped up. Isaac was  _right_. He didn’t talk to Lydia.

“Look, Stiles,” Isaac said, “I don’t want to fight with you, okay?” He sighed and put his hands in his pockets. It wasn’t like Isaac to back away from any type of fight without prompting by Scott or someone else. Isaac didn’t back down when he felt threatened, or right, or generally angry, or at all. It was pretty much his trademark. Stiles wondered what was prompting him to back down now. “It’s not going to do us any good to prove who was a better friend to Lydia, you know? She’s missing, and it’s not anyone’s fault but Peter. So I just wanted to say… sorry.” The word sounded thick, heavy, and hard coming from Isaac.

“I think this is the most you’ve spoken to me probably ever,” Stiles said absentmindedly. He wasn’t even thinking about the words coming out of his mouth, just saying whatever he was feeling. “I accept your apology, Isaac.” Maybe this was the moment, Stiles thought, that they became friends. Hard-won friends brought together by tough times.  

Isaac frowned. “Don’t make this into a  _moment_. It’s not a moment of anything,” he said. Stiles blanched; he hadn't realized that he has said his last thoughts out loud, as well. “This is just me conceding that I was wrong to be so angry at you, mostly because it’s not your fault that Lydia is gone. It is  _your fault_ , however, that she felt like shit before being kidnapped and that you’re acting like an asshole to everyone when everyone else is just trying to help. We all care about Lydia, alright? You’re not special because you’re in love with her even though you’re dating someone else.”

He thought that his realization was his alone, that no one else knew. “I… you can tell?” Stiles asked.  Scott hadn’t said anything about him smelling differently, about the way that knowing Lydia was alive made Stiles’ heart thud quickly in his chest. Malia hadn’t said a thing either, and she was nearly as attuned to his feelings as Scott was, even though she couldn’t always voice exactly what she was sensing. He wondered if he was the last to consciously realize he was still in love with Lydia Martin.

“Dude, you had a ten year plan. Everyone can still tell.”

Stiles and Isaac turned slightly to see Scott walking out of Eichen, Chris Argent following behind slowly. Scott was trying to smile, but Stiles thought it looked more like a grimace, like he couldn't quite muster up enough happiness to smile properly. He opened his mouth to say something, to ask him what was wrong, what else Meredith had said. She must have said something unpleasant about Lydia, confided some disastrous knowledge to Scott when he and Isaac were out of the room. “Hey, Isaac,” Scott said, quickly cutting Stiles off before he could get anything out. “Can you call Braeden? I think she’s going to be landing soon, and I have a feeling she’ll want to know about Derek. She might even be able to tell us where he went.”

“Yeah, of course,” Isaac said, and moved away from the group, his cell phone already in hand.

Stiles stepped toward Scott, trying to catch his eye. But his best friend turned away and looked at Chris, very purposefully ignoring Stiles. “Thank you, Mr. Argent, for helping us out. It was good to talk to Meredith.”

Chris nodded, opened his mouth, and then glanced over at Stiles. He pulled Scott away, and Stiles wanted to follow them, to hear what was going on. He strained his ears, but could only catch words here and there, without context or an entire conversation.  _Warning_ ,  _care_ , and  _responsibility_ echoed well enough over the asphalt, but the rest of their exchange was lost to him. Scott nodded, finally, and moved away as Argent went over to stand near Isaac.

Before Stiles could ask him what Mr. Argent had said, Scott pulled out his phone and called Danny, immediately delving in to something about tracking Derek’s phone and if it was possible to track the car through the Sirius XM Derek was always listening to. He must have said something back that was pleasing, because Scott smiled and thanked him profusely. They said a few things back and forth, and Scott asked about Ethan (which caused him to frown, Stiles noted), but from what he could tell there was hardly anything important.

Scott hung up and Stiles started talking, not giving his friend any time to bark orders or call Liam and have a nice chat about the weather in Beacon Hills. “What happened in there with Meredith? What did she say about Lydia?”

“She didn’t say anything about Lydia,” Scott said. “After you left, she was too on edge to say anything else.” He tried to walk away, to avoid anything else, but Stiles stopped him by grabbing his arm. He knew that Scott could easily break free, that if he wanted to he could shove Stiles away and start running. Or even just convince Isaac to leave him behind when Mr. Argent drove them back to Beacon Hills. But he didn’t; Scott stilled in his hands, and when he turned his face back slightly, Stiles could tell that he was upset.

“I don’t believe you. Tell me what she said.”

Scott turned fully toward Stiles, so they were standing face to face. “Lydia is…” he trailed off. Scott’s eyebrows bent together and he frowned. “Meredith said her voice is stronger than it used to be, which means she’s physically closer to death than she should be.”

“So even if we find her before Halloween,” Stiles said quietly.

“She could already be dead,” Scott finished. “I think whoever took her thinks that she has to be close to death to be powerful enough to bring the dead back. He might kill her before she can.”

Stiles felt his heart drop to his stomach, and he wanted to punch something so hard his knuckles would break. He wanted to feel something physical to match the way his head and his heart were in turmoil, wanted to have the scars to show the world what happened inside of him. He clenched his eyes shut and saw her, gaunt and tiny and hurt, and he didn't know what to do. Why did it seem that every piece of knowledge brought them closer to the realization that Lydia was going to die? Why did it seem like they could never really be hopeful about getting her back? He didn't know whether to cry or start laughing.

“Is that all she said?” Stiles asked, finally.

Scott looked at him for a few seconds before responding. “Yeah. Yeah, that was it."

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> so this chapter comes to you in about 16k words which is ridiculous and probably not necessary. i hate the way i write and think this chapter is about as good as, like, something that's not good. a flat tire. this chapter is a flat tire. when you really need to be somewhere soon and it is literally the worst time to have a flat tire.
> 
> i really enjoyed writing Malia's scene and just writing Malia in general which was a total surprise for me. I hope her voice is pretty different from everyone else's. also fuck peter.
> 
> thanks for sticking with me even though i update sporadically to say the least. the good news is i know how many chapters this story will be which is fantastic, and hopefully none of them will be this long until we hit the end which i think will be pretty decent even if the rest of the story kind of falls apart in terms of action and characterization. sorry for the lack of caps in this note.
> 
> if you hate the update, let me know. if you love it, let me know.


	9. and i told you to be patient

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Warning for talk of death and detailed description of Peter attacking Lydia. It's a bit graphic (but not too long), so if that triggers you or you just don't want to read it, skip the paragraph after this exchange:
> 
> “They can,” she whispered back, and a lump rose in her throat.
> 
> The weight of his gaze was too much to handle even though she wasn’t looking at him, and Lydia shrunk back into the tree. “Lydia, that’s not true,” he said.

His fingers thundered nervously over the hard leather that covered his steering wheel. Of the many words that could be and were used to describe Stiles, patient was never one of them. But for some reason, he found himself glued to his seat, unable to move. He tapped the top of his phone and the numbers  _2:43 AM_  glowed back at him ominously, letting him know that time was ticking down, that things were falling apart. He had to go in. He had to go in there and face him and do this, for Lydia. To make sure that she was safe, to get to her before time ran out. He had to do this.

His fingers continued to drum against the steering wheel.

Stiles licked his lips and felt the painful grooves that let him know they were chapped. His hair was a mess and the clothes he had on looked like a hobo picked them out in the dark but honestly, he didn’t care. He couldn’t care; there was too much at stake for him to care. He needed to find her. Still, though, he stayed in his car.

It wasn’t that he didn’t want to go in. He wasn’t  _scared_  of Peter. But he knew that Peter had an angle, something he wanted, too. But time was running out, and Stiles needed to find her, and he couldn’t think straight enough to cut a deal. He glanced down at his phone again.  _2:45 AM_.

“It’s now or never,” he muttered to himself.

Stiles flung open his door and stepped out of the car. 

* * *

 

“Derek?”

Lydia’s voice echoed across the cellar and she immediately regretted speaking. It was dark outside, and although she couldn’t quite tell what time it was, she knew that she should probably be asleep. If the rudimentary calendar she etched into the hard dirt next to her was any indication, she didn’t have many days left to be sleeping. But then, she thought with a wry smile, maybe that was why she couldn’t sleep; she didn’t have much time to be awake, either.

Derek’s eyes uneasily fluttered open, and it took him a minute to focus on her face. Clyde had given them a rudimentary light that ran on batteries, stayed on constantly, and illuminated nearly everything in their cellar with a soft yellow light like a million fireflies caught in a jar. The light made it possible for them to see each other, even on the darkest of nights, but it also provided every object with a strange haze that made them seem like they weren’t quite part of this world, and for some reason, Lydia found it fitting. She and Derek were fading out of existence, it seemed, headed for some place other than the world they had lived in all their lives.

It had been roughly two weeks since Derek had stumbled upon her location, and the change was almost frightening. His breathing was shallow and labored, and he had his head tipped back, the poison laced prongs of his choke collar balanced uneasily on the thin skin of his throat. Derek’s skin had a sickly pale sheen to it, his lips were cracked and bleeding, and his cheeks were hollowing out. Whatever fire he had in him was slowly going out; his eyes were dulling and he slept more than he was awake, and Lydia wondered if this is what she looked like. Like someone who was slowly dying, someone who was just tired of being here. But she had been in the cellar longer, she reminded herself, and she had eaten less and slept less and had less fat and muscle on her when she was taken. Derek was fit, Derek could survive. Derek  _had_  to survive. He had been through so much in his life, and she wouldn’t,  _couldn’t_ , have another friend die for her. Not him, or Scott. Not when she was so far gone herself. She probably looked like the banshees of myth. Like a skeleton with skin stretched over the bones, barely alive and looking less so every minute, with a wide mouth and stringy, limp hair. The human personification of death itself.

“Yeah?” Derek’s voice was quiet, raspy. Once his eyes finally met hers, she looked down pointedly, shame and fear building in the pit of her stomach. He watched her, trying to wake himself up, trying to focus, and she kept silent. She wanted to tell him it was nothing, tell him to go back to sleep, that she had spoken out in her sleep. But Derek knew she hadn’t been sleeping; he noticed she was awake when he fell asleep and awake every time he woke up, and she didn’t doubt that the bags under her eyes looked more like bruises than anything else. “Lydia, what’s wrong?” he asked, his voice stronger this time, but his tone more gentle.

She bit into her lip and tasted her own blood. Lydia ran her tongue over her lip and felt the sting of pain, of saliva mixing with blood and bacteria, and she was glad for the ache. She was very aware of Derek’s eyes watching her even though she wasn’t doing anything of interest. She honestly couldn’t say why she had called out to him. It had passed through her lips before she could stop it, her high and wavering voice echoing to him before she could call it back in. She hadn’t meant to say anything, to drag him into her internal monologue, to say any of that out loud. It had become normal for her to talk to him, to tell him everything she was thinking, and so she had called for him in a moment of desperation and now she wasn’t sure what to say.

“Lydia, what’s wrong?” Derek asked again.

She drew a ragged breath and her lip quivered, and finally she looked back at him. “I just… I was thinking, and… and I couldn’t quite, you know, figure it out. What it felt like.” He drew his eyebrows together in question, and she shrugged, the heavy chains shifting slightly with the movement. It nearly took all of her stamina and energy to even lift those chains, and she felt an ache in her shoulders that seemed permanent now. Even if she made it out of this place, she thought, the pain would never go away. The scars and the weakness would always be there. She was broken, she thought. Finally broken.

Lydia looked away from his face again, her eyes drawn to the small patch of darkness under the stairs that their soft light didn’t reach. “What  _what_  felt like?” Derek asked cautiously. She had been steering clear of any topics regarding their predicament lately, instead choosing to ask Derek about his life before they met, about the things he liked to do and the books he’d read and what he had dreamed of as a child. She learned that he had always been interested in the stars, that his mom used to take him out when he was young to look at constellations. She had told him that it was natural for wolves to be interested in the moon and the stars, because so much of what they were depended on what was up there. And though it was little Derek’s dream to be an astronomer, as he grew up, he understood that it might be a problem. What he if landed on the moon and couldn’t help himself? That had made her laugh, and he had smiled to see her so happy, even if it was just for a little while.

They found they had a shared interest in physics, though her knowledge was much, much deeper than his, and they both had a fondness for Russian novels. Derek liked  _The Brothers Karamazov_ , and Lydia had agreed that it was one of Dostoyevsky’s better novels. She prefered Nabokov, especially  _Pnin_ , though when she first read Lolita when she was young, she had really liked the book. Not because of Humbert but because of Lolita, and the resemblances she didn’t want to admit existed between her and the titular character. Derek had listened to that confession, and afterward told her that when he first met her, he saw her as something like a Lolita, trying to be older and more sophisticated than she really was, drawn to things she didn’t quite understand. But now, he knew better. She and Lolita were strong, and they endured, and Lydia wondered what it meant that she had so much in common with one of literature’s most famous young victims.

Derek told her about what it was like to lose his family, and then to fight through all of that, to recover from it as best as he could. How he and his sister leaned on each other a lot, even though he went to school in Berkeley and was determined never to return to Beacon Hills. She found out he studied business at UCB’s Haas school, and she whistled appreciatively. Haas was hard to get into and offered a great program, and her father had wanted her to go there to major “in something practical” instead of physics at MIT. But then she had talked about why she wanted to study physics, about understanding the way the universe worked and discovering new things that could potentially change how we saw the Earth and when she looked up, Derek had the most pained expression on his face and it was then that she realized that maybe he didn’t expect them to get out, like he kept saying. If he was so sad to hear her talk about her dreams, about her future, then maybe he was worried she wouldn’t have one.

And so, in an effort to stay away from what she would have wanted if she lived, they went back to talking about other subjects. About art and the past and their friends, and love. They talked about Braeden a lot. Lydia found that it was easy to distract him, when he started asking her about Stiles, if she mentioned Braeden. She didn’t want to think about Stiles. Thinking about Stiles meant that she would have to think about being in love, and about how, if everything worked out how she wanted it to (as if her wishes were anything more than tiny prayers of desperation), she would never be able to tell him.

So it was odd for her, she knew, to be speaking so desperately. To want to break the wall they had built between themselves and their situation, between reality and this fantasy world where them getting to know each other so deeply would matter. Where, once they got out of here, they would be better friends. Closer pack mates. Bonded.

“I want to know what it would feel like to die,” she said quickly. “I just… I want to know, before it happens, what it feels like to die. So I know what to expect.”

“Lydia, you’re not going to die,” Derek said sternly. “We’re not going to die in here, do you hear me?” She said nothing, but her lip quivered. Either Derek had a lot of faith in his ability to survive anything, or he was able to put on a very good show of bravado for her. Either way, Lydia didn’t exactly feel comforted. She knew that he doubted it, himself. That he was worried that she would never be able to walk the hallowed halls of MIT and learn about quantum physics and do math and meet people who, like her, were inspired by the way the universe worked. He could say it all he wanted, but really, was it true? Probably not. “Lydia, do you hear me?”

She couldn’t help but stare at the patch of darkness, the little unknown in their ethereal cellar illuminated with light. “Of course I heard you,” she said, her voice shrill. Lydia licked the puncture in her lip one more time, and felt the dried crust of blood already over the wound. Apparently, her body didn’t want to waste any more of its precious resources than it needed to, and that included her blood. “But do you honestly think we’re going to survive this? Does it look like both of us are going to make it out alive?”

“I do,” he said confidently. She snorted without meaning to, and she wondered if the sleep deprivation was finally impeding her ability to censor herself. If all of this was happening because she was tired, too  _damn_  tired to keep herself from speaking out. “I mean it,” Derek said. “You know Scott is coming for us. They’ll find us before something happens.” His voice seemed almost sure, but then, at the end, she heard a small shake, and she knew that he doubted it. That Derek doubted he really wanted Scott to come for them.

Her eyes moved from the space under the stairs to his eyes in one graceful sweep. “And you know what is going to happen to Scott if he finds us,” she said. “You’ve listened to my dreams, you’ve heard my predictions. And yet you’re still hoping he comes? You’re still hoping he finds us? I’m literally leading Scott to slaughter be being here and being alive, Derek.”

“If Scott comes here, that is his choice,” Derek said after a moment of silence. They words hung in the air between them, and Lydia just snorted again and shook her head. Derek wasn’t sure, she knew, but he was trying to be strong because she was finally being weak, because after days and days of talking to her he was finally understanding just how fragile she was inside. And maybe that made him want to protect her. She didn’t know. “You warned him, didn’t you? He knows the risk he’s taking if he chooses to rescue you. And we both know he’s going to come anyway.”

“Does he, though? Does he know what it’s like to die, what it will mean for everyone around him? Scott means something to a lot of people, Derek. He  _matters_. He’s both loyal and capable of inspiring loyalty and that is so rare. For someone to be so pure and still be able to lead people. I mean, look at the heroes people champion, the people who inspired great things. Martin Luther King, Jr. didn’t have a high opinion of women and cheated on his wife. Gandhi was racist and classist. Even Mother Teresa was known to protect people who harmed children in order to protect the reputation of the church,” she said, and Lydia knew she was rambling. She didn’t care. “But Scott… he’s not like them. He’s…” she stumbled, trying to find the right word.

Derek tipped his head slightly to the left. “A hero? A savior?”

“He’s Scott,” she finished, and Derek nodded. She found she was elated that he understood her, understood this utter devotion she found inside of herself for her alpha. And she wondered if it was because they were both broken, in a way, and that they light had been Scott. That Scott had saved them and given them something to believe in and helped them, and they both knew he would continue to help people. “He just… he can’t die, Derek. He means too much to everyone. I don’t know what they would do without him. What Stiles would do without his best friend or what Melissa would do without her son or what Kira would so without him. He would be missed, like Allison was missed, and I can’t let anyone else go through that. If I had the choice, you know?” If it meant the choice between her life and his, Lydia would choose Scott’s every time. Even if he wouldn’t let her. Because Stiles was right, all those months ago, when he told her that death doesn’t happen to you but everyone around you, and everyone around her would be utterly devastated if Scott were to die.

It was quiet in the cellar, and Lydia pulled her eyes away from Derek to watch the door. It was still dark outside, and she guessed it was early morning, and she hoped that Clyde wouldn’t hear them and come storming down to yell about them waking him up with all their chatter. With his supernaturally good hearing, he could catch when they were talking amongst themselves, and if they said anything that he didn’t like or were too loud, he usually came down and proceeded to threaten them or even, on occasion, hit them. Lydia had cuts from where he had slapped her with the back of his hand and dragged his claws down the side of her face.

“You think it would be better if you died,” Derek stated quietly, and her eyes went wide. “That they could survive without you, if you were the one who died instead of Scott.”

“They can,” she whispered back, and a lump rose in her throat.

The weight of his gaze was too much to handle even though she wasn’t looking at him, and Lydia shrunk back into the tree. “Lydia, that’s not true,” he said.

She took a deep breath and smiled softly, her face sweeping up to meet his heavy eyes. “What have I done but caused them pain and suffering?” she asked. “I was attacked by Peter so I could then bring him back to life, as a contingency plan. Before that, none of you even really liked me except Allison. Scott hated me and you hated me and Stiles thought he loved me but really, he loved whatever idea he had of me, and then I was attacked.” Her voice was urgent and her hands were shaking but Lydia was still smiling, trying to make her fears seem far more pleasant than they were. And that’s what they were; her deepest dears, risen to the surface because of impending death and lack of sleep and so, so many other things. Because of Scott and Derek and  _Stiles_  and the way that she didn’t want anyone else to die for her and if she was the reason Scott and Allison and Aiden were dead then she wouldn’t be able to live with herself, and what good would their sacrifices be if she never lived after they were made? “You know, I can still feel the way his claws sunk into my thighs when he grabbed me. Out of all the things I want to forget about my life, Peter attacking me is probably the highest on my list. But I can still remember everything until I blacked out. I can remember the way he snarled, I can remember the smell of the turf from the field and the way the dirt felt under my fingernails as I clawed at it in hopes that I could get away. I can remember the taste of blood in my mouth because I bit my tongue when he dragged me down, and god I remember how much I hated that I was wearing heels. I could feel him touching me and I wanted to cry and nothing came. I remember he made a point to let his fingers caress my flesh before he ripped into it, and then he touched my inner thigh and I wanted to pass out. He pushed my dress up, Derek. I thought... I... I wanted to forget whatever was going to happen next, but it wasn’t until he fucking bit me that I was able to black out. And god, it felt like it took forever for him to bite me.”

Derek made some pained noise from the back of his throat, and she suddenly remembered that he wasn’t there when she was attacked. That she had been alone on the field and the only two people who knew what happened were her and Peter, and she was almost glad to be getting all of this off of her chest if it meant some part of her story would live on when Derek lived on. “After being attacked, I spent months of my life living in a hallucination so I could bring Peter back to life, and there is no way you can tell me that was good. If I wasn’t alive, Derek, that wouldn’t have happened… everyone that he has hurt since I brought him back would have been saved.”

“You can’t blame that on yourself, Lydia,” Derek said. “What Peter did to you isn’t your fault. You didn’t ask to be attacked and you didn’t ask to be used. To be manipulated into bringing him back to life.”

She laughed humorlessly. “What about Allison, then? She died trying to save me. She died because I am too weak to protect myself and have always been too weak and I hurt more than I help, Derek. Aiden is dead because I pushed him to be a hero and Allison is dead because she wanted to save me. Even the dead pool was my fault, because Meredith heard me and wanted to end my suffering. Those people died because of my scream and I don’t know how to forgive myself,” she gasped, and a soft wail left her throat. She wasn’t crying; she didn’t know if she had it left in her, but she could certainly feel the depth of her mistakes, could feel the souls of those people that died as an indirect result of some action of hers. They spoke to her, whispered softly, chanted words that she couldn’t quite understand but that she sensed had to do with who they were, with  _their_  hopes and dreams and lives. The only word she could really make out was a name, and it was her name, and she wondered if they blamed her like she blamed her. If they wanted her dead and so joined the chorus inside of her mind to add an extra layer of torment and Lydia hated herself for being so weak.

“Now I’ve been kidnapped again, detained again,  _used_  again. I’m the one who keeps being taken, Derek, the one who keeps finding herself in situations where bad things can and do happen and isn’t that my fault? I can’t have Scott’s blood on my hands, too. I can’t let every hero in Beacon Hills die for me,” she said, and it surprised her to feel tears running down her face, to hear the way her voice shook when she talked to him. She was staring at her hands instead of staring at him, because she didn’t want to see him accept her words even though she knew it was true. “What use am I to them? I’m smart and I’m a banshee, and those things never seem to help.”

“How can you not think that you’re important to them?” Derek asked suddenly, and Lydia looked up at him. A salty tear mixed with a barely healed cut on her cheek and she winced, and Derek frowned. “You’re not just a problem to be fixed or a way to predict death. If you were to die, and I’m not saying you will because we’re going to survive this, they would be devastated. Lydia, they all care about you.”

“They shouldn’t,” she said quietly.

“ _But they do_ ,” Derek said, and his voice was harsher than it had been. “You think it would be easier for them to live without you? For Scott to live and you to die? Either way, they would be losing a member of their pack. Either way, a friend is dying. And one death is not easier than another. Sacrificing yourself is always easier than living with the consequences of being left behind.”

And she knew it was true. That, if she were to die, it would be easier than if she were to live without Scott, to live with the guilt of being the one for whom he died. To have Stiles hate her, to have Melissa hate her. “But if I die,” she said, and her eyes found his again. “If I die, no one would blame Scott. Eventually, he would accept there was nothing he could do and my parents would blame whoever kidnapped me, and the media would blame them too. It would be inevitable. And they would move on. Scott and Kira have each other, and you have Braeden, and Stiles has Malia, and my parents have my older sister. I’m not saying they wouldn’t be sad. But in the end, I  _matter_  less than he does. He’s a hero, Derek. He’s an alpha. He’s  _Scott_.  And people need him in a way they don’t need me.”

His eyes softened and she knew, then, that he realized she was right. Either that, or he was tired or arguing with her, because he knew she wouldn’t change her mind. Scott deserved to live. Scott was necessary. And she hoped beyond hope, even though she had the darkest of feelings in her gut that something was going to happen to him, that he would stay home. That he would let her go, and Braeden would come for him and it would all work out. “If you were to die, Stiles would be broken,” he said finally, and she felt her heart drop. She wasn’t sure what Derek was trying to do, what he wanted to convince her of, but he was trying to use her feelings for Stiles to his advantage. “He loves you.”

Lydia’s eyes filled up with tears again, and she wanted to tell him that Stiles didn’t, that there was no way he did. It was unfair for Derek to even insinuate that, even pretend that she had a chance with Stiles because it wasn’t true. He was with Malia. And Stiles was the kind of person who was going to choose Malia, who  _should_  choose Malia. “Even if he does,” she said with an even voice, trying not to betray her feelings, “his loving me doesn’t make my life worth more than Scott’s.”

“Neither of you deserve to die,” Derek said.

“And yet one of us will,” she replied. “Either I die in a sacrificial ceremony or Scott dies trying to save me.”

They were both quiet for a while. That was the truth. The unavoidable truth. Either Lydia died before Scott could save her or Scott died trying to save her. No matter what Derek said, about being in love or having hopes or dreams or anything, it didn’t matter. If her calendar was right, it was the early morning of the day before Halloween, and by this time on the day after tomorrow, one of them would no longer be breathing in this world. “You know, you’re just as much of a hero as Scott is,” Derek said.

She cocked her head to the side and knitted her eyebrows together. Now it was her turn to question him, to wonder what he meant. She had never thought of herself as a hero. A beauty, yes; a genius, of course, but never a hero. She was a victim who found her strength and tried to help people, and maybe Meredith was right that she was a monster who didn’t do monstrous things. But she wasn’t a hero. She didn’t save anyone. She just led them to slaughter. “I’m serious,” he said. “Lydia, you’re stronger than just about every person I’ve ever met. I don’t know how to describe it, but you are always willing to shoulder your burden and everyone else’s. You’re just like him.”

“He’s a better person than I am,” she said.

Derek shook his head. “No, he’s not,” he said. “You’re strong and caring and brave. You’re a hero, Lydia. A hero and a leader. If you weren’t immune, you would have been a powerful alpha.”

“But I wouldn’t have been a true alpha,” she refuted quickly. “I don’t have that light inside of me that he does.” Her eyes wandered away from Derek’s worn face and around the cellar. If it had been Scott, he would have found a way out already. He would have convinced them to let him go and join him out in the sun. That’s what he did with everyone. He made everyone a better person.

She heard laughter, and glanced over at Derek again. “I don’t know about that. True alphas derive their power from their pack. They are strong because they care about people and understand them, and the desire to protect their pack makes them even stronger. You care about people, Lydia. You like to pretend you don’t but you do. And a true alpha is stronger when they’re surrounded by their pack, when their unit is complete. I think you’re stronger around your friends. I think you would do anything to protect them. Just like Allison, and just like Scott.”

Lydia didn’t believe him. She may have been a better person than she was three years ago or even a year ago, but she wasn’t Scott McCall. He was  _special_ in ways that people couldn’t fathom, even now. She wasn’t like him, not really; she didn’t have that same innocence, that same empathy, that same love inside of her. She wasn’t someone who could be smashed and then heal themselves; she was broken on the inside, and would remain broken, unable to put herself back together fully until the day she died.

Derek’s head slipped back against the wall, and he closed his eyes. He slept more often than he was awake these days, and she knew it had to do with the poison that bubbled through his veins. She noticed Clyde had been coating fewer prongs with poison in the past few days, but it didn’t seem to make Derek any stronger, only kept him from getting any weaker. Lydia sighed and fell backward into the roots of the yew tree, taking a deep breath of their now familiar earthy scent.

Across the cavern, Lydia could hear Derek breathing. She could hear him breath in and out, and again she thought about what it would be like to die. About what it would be like to cease to exist, to transcend whatever is in this world and go on the that place just within hearing range, that place where all of her voices lived. She wondered if quick and painless actually meant quick and painless for the person, and then figured it wouldn’t matter; her sacrifice wouldn’t be quick, it wouldn’t be painless. It would be miserable. But at least no one else would have to feel the life drain from her body, no one else would have to know the exact moment that she stopped breathing, like she had for Allison.

Derek’s eyes opened, and he found her in the hazy light, and she smiled at him. He smiled back, soft and unfocused. “Promise me, Lydia. Promise me that you won’t do anything to endanger yourself on purpose. Promise me you’ll try to live,” Derek said. His voice was quiet and he sounded like he was somewhere else, like he was still partially asleep and he thought this was a dream. “If Scott comes for us, promise you’ll let him save you.” Lydia looked at him. Had it been even a month ago, Lydia was sure Derek would have chosen Scott over her any day, if he had to choose. But now, after getting to know her, he was conflicted. He saw that she loved people and cared about things and had passions.

“I promise,” she lied.

* * *

The key he had stolen from his dad was heavy in his pocket, and the time on his phone read  _3:15 AM_. He had spent over twenty minutes outside of the makeshift jail cell trying to hype himself up to go in there and convince Peter to give him Lydia’s location, but all he could think was: He shouldn’t be here, at least not without backup. At least not without someone to detain Peter in the car. He hadn’t even thought about Peter jumping out and running but now that it was a possibility, it was all he could think about. His once chance to save Lydia, bounding away in the night. Or maybe Peter would just slit his throat the second Stiles let him out. It would be a clean get away and he would be able to fuck with Scott.

“Are you going to speak, Stiles? Or are you just going to stand there all night looking constipated?”

Stiles looked up and glared at Peter. “Shut the fuck up, alright. I don’t have the patience for your bullshit right now.”

Peter was sitting on the same wooden stool he had been on since Stiles walked in a few minutes ago, and now was watching every move that Stiles made. His eyes followed Stiles as he paced, back and forth, back and forth. He could feel Peter’s eyes on him, could almost feel the absolute glee he exuded. Stiles ran his hand through his hair and Peter copied this movement, grinning like the Cheshire Cat back at him. “You came to me,” he said easily, lightly. Like he couldn’t possibly know why Stiles had come to him. Like it was unfathomable to him that Stiles would be here. “You do realize that I was not the one who came into your residence at three in the morning to bother you. So, out with it:  _Why_  are you here, Mr. Stilinski?”

Stiles stopped pacing and walked right up to the barrier, easily pushing his hand over the mountain ash. Peter watched him with envy, and Stiles pulled his hand back. He wanted him to know that he could free him, if he wanted to. That Peter wouldn’t have to be trapped. “You know why I’m here, Peter,” Stiles said darkly.

Peter chuckled. “I can guess. You did the math, figured out our pretty little strawberry blonde has two days until-” Peter made a cutting motion across his own neck accompanied by a slick and wet slicing noise. Stiles noticed that he looked far too pleased with this outcome, far too happy to image Lydia’s neck being cut. “I’m quite surprised it took you so long to get to me.”

“We’ve been trying to track down other leads-”

“And let me guess,” Peter said abruptly, cutting Stiles off as he leapt to his feet. “You’ve gotten nowhere. Found nothing. All your many resources in the form of hunters and supernatural creatures, and you can’t do anything to save her.” He was closer now, slowly walking toward Stiles, Peter’s eyes focused completely on Stiles’. Stiles didn’t break the eye contact, instead trying his best to glare Peter down, to intimidate him. To feel anything other than a burning anger. “My, my, what kind of failure are you, Stiles? Can’t get the girl, can’t save the girl, won’t even be there to comfort the girl when she takes her last breath. Won’t even know whose name she cries out to come and save her. Yours? Scott’s?  _Mine?_ ”

“ _Shut up_ ,” Stiles snarled through the barrier. “Don’t even  _pretend_  that Lydia felt anything for you other than absolute contempt. I don’t want you to even  _imagine_  she did anything other than hate you.”

Peter was only a few feet away now, and the smile on his face was nothing short of predatory. “She did much more than hate me when I was in her consciousness,” Peter said. He cocked his head to the side. “I seem to remember her kissing me on more than one occasion. Kissing me and touching me and wanting  _more_  from me.”

Stiles narrowed his eyes. “That wasn’t even real,” Stiles reminded him. “You were just a figment in her mind,  _using_ her and taking advantage of her.”

“Just because it was in her mind, doesn’t mean it wasn’t real,” Peter said, and then tapped a finger to his chin. “I do believe I’ve heard that somewhere. Harry Potter, maybe? I can’t remember. But I do remember that she was enjoyable. Had our age difference not been so great, I think there could have been something there. Or, well, if she weren’t going to be dying soon, maybe there still could have been.”

Peter’s lips curled upward and Stiles let out a vicious, angry yell that reminded him of a howl. He wasn’t even a werewolf, and he was howling.  _Goddamn_ , he thought somewhere in the back of his mind,  _I need to get some more human friends._  “I am going to kill you,” Stiles said. Any rational thoughts were overrun by his anger, and in that moment Stiles hated more than anything that his buttons were so easily pushed, so easily taken advantage of. He hated Peter and everything Peter had ever done, everything that Peter had ever caused. “If she doesn’t make it back here alive I am going to tear you apart and enjoy it. I am going to torture you, you son of a bitch. Even if she does make it back here, even if she is okay,  _I am going to destroy you._ ” He glared at Peter, and his left hand curled into a fist, and he wanted to beat him. Stiles wanted to take out every negative feeling he ever had on Peter’s smug little asshole face. He only wished he had the supernatural strength to do any damage.“You never should have been born.”

 “You shouldn’t think that way,” Peter said. “After all, without me, there would have been no Malia. And, unless you’ve ruined another relationship, you are still dating her, aren’t you? Isn’t he, Malia?”

Stiles blinked, and he turned toward the door to the cell. Malia stood in the doorway, framed by both the light of the moon and the light of the streetlamps outside. She looked guilty, like she knew she shouldn’t be there, but she walked up to them anyway. She gave Stiles a halfhearted smile, but when she looked at her father, Stiles saw nothing but anger.

“He isn’t,” she said. Stiles’ eyes widened and he focused completely on Malia, Peter almost falling away from his sight. Was she breaking up with him? Did she follow him here to help him or to make sure that he didn’t do anything to Peter? His mind grinded to a halt and he stared at her. Malia had just broken up with him. She had just… she heard him talk about Lydia and just decided, out of nowhere, to break up with him. Or had it been out of nowhere? Had she been planning this? His mind wouldn’t stop asking questions, and he wished they were anywhere else but here so he could find out why. “But that’s okay. Some relationships just aren’t meant to be, and it’s not his fault that ours wasn’t.” Stiles reached out and touched her arm, lightly, but she shook him off.

Peter laughed. “Then you came to help me out? Oh, my little indecisive girl, how I-”

Malia growled, and Peter stopped mid-sentence. “I’m not here for you,” she said. “I came to make sure Stiles wasn’t doing anything stupid, and when you started baiting him I knew that someone was going to need to stop him from jumping over the line of mountain ash and getting himself killed.”

Stiles whispered thank you, and Malia looked at him with a smile on her face. She mouthed  _no problem_ , and turned back to Peter. “I think our offer is pretty clear. It’s time for you to tell us where Lydia is, and how we can help her. Or else she’s going to die, and I know you don’t want that. I remember your violent reaction when I even suggested it last time, and I can see how nervous you really are. It that a calendar scratched onto your wall? Trying to tell how much time she has left?”

For the first time, Stiles noticed a rudimentary set of marks on the wall of Peter’s cell that most obviously was a calendar. He had been keeping up with Lydia’s timeline. And Stiles realized that he had walked in, blinded by anger and guilt and so many other emotions, that he didn’t even notice how worked up Peter was. Just like him, Peter was desperate to have Lydia back. He was desperate to find her just in the nick of time. But why?

Peter narrowed his eyes at Malia and bared his teeth. She just smirked, and crossed her arms over her chest. “I told you,” he said nastily, his eyes glowing blue, “I would lead Scott to Lydia. Not you two. I want my former beta to be the one to put my pack back together. Not a human and a coyote.”

“Lydia and I aren’t your pack, Peter,” Scott said, and Stiles looked to the doorway again to see his best friend standing there. “But I’m here now. So either you willingly tell her where she is, or we will make you tell us. And,” he said, his eyes red in response to Peter’s intimidation technique, “I’ve already beat you once. I can do it, again, with a lot more pain.”

Peter’s eyes changed back to normal, and the frenzied snarl fell from his face. “Oh, no need for threats, Scott. Now that you’re here, everything is fine.” Peter took a few steps back and motioned to the mountain ash line in the middle of the room. “Stiles, if you would,” he said.

Stiles glanced over at Scott, who nodded, and he stepped over the line to cuff Peter before kicking away the mountain ash to lead him to his Jeep. Before he had come in, Stiles realized that handcuffs probably weren’t enough to hold a werewolf, but Peter seemed quite content with them around his wrists, and Stiles was fairly convinced that he wouldn’t try and run. Or, if he did, Scott and Malia would be there to drag his bloodied body back with them. Once the barrier was broken, Malia grabbed the chain between the cuffs and started dragging Peter out of the cell, where Stiles noticed Kira was waiting.

He went to follow her, but Scott put his arm in front of Stiles.

“You should have called before you came here, Stiles,” Scott said. “We were going to come here in the morning, you know that.”

Stiles stared at the ground. “All we’ve been doing is waiting, Scott. I thought… I had to do something. Danny called me to tell me they hadn’t made any headway in Portland and to ask me to look something up in Derek’s apartment. And while I was there, I just got so fed up with all of this waiting.”

Scott shrugged. “I get that, I do. But you still should have called me. Coming in here, by yourself? That was reckless. That was stupid.”

“I know, okay? I know. I just…”

“You wanted to be the one to save her.”

Malia’s voice was quiet, but her words were clear. Scott turned around and Stiles met her eyes over his shoulder, and he felt his heart sink. She looked sad. Sadder than she had a few minutes ago, sadder than she had since Lydia was taken. She just looked sad, and tired, and even a little defeated.

“Scott,” Stiles said. “Do you think, maybe we could… Malia and I could have some time alone before we go?”

Scott didn’t say anything as he moved away from Stiles and out of the door of the cell, only pausing briefly to grip Malia’s shoulder. She nodded at him, and he moved on without making a noise. Stiles followed after him, much more slowly, coming to a stop about a foot from his (ex) girlfriend. “Thanks for intervening,” he said.

She shrugged and bit her lip. “It was nothing,” she muttered. “I wanted to make sure you were safe and weren’t doing something completely stupid.”

He laughed humorlessly. “I pretty sure everything I do is completely stupid,” he said.

Malia smiled up at him, but the smile didn’t quite reach her eyes. He felt bad; bad that he had put her in a position that she felt the need to break up, and even worse that he found he wasn’t really bothered by it. He knew he should have been, of course, but for some reason it just didn’t hurt him. “It’s not my problem anymore, I guess,” she said. “Whether or not what you’re doing is stupid.”

“Malia…”

She held up a hand, and he quieted immediately. “I meant what I said before. It’s okay. I’ve known since she was taken, you know… that it would have to end this way between us. You couldn’t even think of anything other than her. And it’s okay. It really is.”

He wanted to say something but he couldn’t quite find the words. She played with the hem of her jacket, which he recognized as one of Allison’s old favorites. It was purple, and it suited her. She had told him a few days ago that purple was her favorite color, not red, and that had struck him as the moment that Malia was finally exploring herself and her own person. That she finally wanted to seek out who she was instead of who the people around her were. It was hard for him to explain, even to himself, what that had meant.

“I like you a lot, Stiles, but I don’t love you,” she said. “And I think you feel the same way about me. But you love her.”

Malia met his eyes, and he noticed that she wasn’t crying. He felt like crying, but he wasn’t, and she seemed like she should be crying, and she wasn’t. “I do,” he said finally. “I do love her.”

“Then let’s go get her back,” Malia said. “Let’s go save Lydia.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I'M SO SORRY GUYS I'M TRASH. I'M TRASH WHO TOOK A MONTH TO GET THIS CHAPTER TO YOU. I AM REALLY SORRY AND I HAVE NO EXCUSE FOR THE LATENESS AND I APOLOGIZE WITH EVERYTHING I AM. I am really, really, sorry. You all deserve better if you have stuck with me through this. 
> 
> A few things of note:  
> \- As always, let me know if you liked it, hated it, or what I can do to improve  
> \- Seeing people theorize about future events gives me life and I love it  
> \- I wrote another story called Icarus that is Stydia and it kind of fits with this one. Check it out if you want to! It's different in style but I like it (and it was part of the reason this chapter took so long...)  
> \- YOU GUYS ARE GREAT AND I'M SORRY


	10. and i told you to be fine

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Warning for: blood, descriptions of fighting, bones breaking, lots of other stuff. Um let's see and people being naked (although it is the opposite of sexual in nature so there's that). Also mentions of death.

Her shoulders were stiff. Other parts of her ached, too, but the biggest issue Lydia had at the moment was the painful throb of her shoulders that kept her hands from doing anything other than hanging limply at her sides like they had done every day since she was chained up; they were used to not moving, and Lydia was used to not being able to move them, and now that she had that option she was angry to find she still couldn’t take it. The cold water, bearing heavily down on her through the already chilly air, did nothing to alleviate the problem and, most likely, worsened her soreness, but Lydia was not going to complain about being able to take one last shower. Even if she was stuck in a stall outside in the bitter cold weather of a brisk fall morning in the pacific northwest.

She closed her eyes and concentrated, her left arm rising up slowly. Pinpricks of pain jolted through her shoulder and her back muscles screamed at the effort and she hated herself for how weak she had become after a month of little activity. She had never been strong in the first place, but this was embarrassing, this was humiliating, this was the reality of being kidnapped and kept alive, barely alive, for something she didn’t even know if she could do. At least Peter, she thought, had the decency to let her eat and sleep in her own bed when he tortured and used her, and Lydia felt a white hot hatred for Clyde because his actions made her appreciate Peter in some fashion. She reached upward and further upward, toward her own head, and felt every inch of the journey reverberate through her bones. She wished that the water were warm so she could loosen the stiffness in her shoulders, or that there was a better way to wash the dirt and food and crusted blood from her hair than scrubbing with her fingers. But there wasn’t, and her arm shook with the effort. Her muscles had atrophied from hardly any use or nutrition and her joints had become accustomed to staying in the same position, day after day and night after night, and she felt like she was barely anything at all, anymore.

A tear left her eye and quickly mixed with the water streaming down her face. Lydia knew she needed to fight through the pain. She reached up with all of her strength and grasped the bar of soap Clyde left her, quickly bringing it back to herself. She cleaned methodically, trying to keep her mind off of freezing water that chilled her to the core or the searing screams of pain from her underutilised muscles and aching bones. She started with the raw skin by her wrists that, until a few minutes ago, had been covered with heavy metal manacles, but now only looked pale and bruised and bloodied. There were sores where the edges repeatedly dug into her skin, inflamed by infection her immune system had been too weak to fight off completely. She scrubbed, and the scabs ripped off and leaked blood and pus and if she had anything in her to throw up she would have, right then and there, but she didn’t. Red and yellow and white swirled in with the clear water for a second, and she watched the colors swirl around the rudimentary drain in the concrete floor of the bathing stall. She kept scrubbing. The infected sores stung, and Lydia was amazed that there were parts of her body that were still hellbent on fighting for her survival even when she herself had given up any hope of it happening.

Today was the day. She had been counting in her head and in the dirt, counting how many days had passed since she had been taken and how many remained until she was going to die, and today was the day. October 31. Clyde had woken up unusually early that morning and dragged her out of the cellar by her chains because she was nearly too weak to stand. He didn’t have the patience for her to slowly get up with tears in her eyes and screams of pain echoing from her throat, didn’t want to wait for her to walk the few feet to the shower head. The sun was barely peeking over the horizon, and he unlocked the manacles around arms and stripped her, took everything away from her, and then shoved her into the shower stall. He didn’t even take a second to look at her naked body, something she was accustomed to when it came to men, but then she remembered that she was nothing but skin stretched gauntly over a skeleton covered in dirt and blood and her own bile, probably. She wasn’t appealing to anyone, not anymore. It was freezing, and she was going to die, and she was naked as the sun rose through the trees and she was going to die.

The soap moved up her arms and cleaned dirt out of her pores, cleaned her scrapes and cuts and abrasions, and she almost successfully ignored the pain burning all over her body by concentrating on the way the dirt washed off into the pool of water surrounding the drain. She scraped the soap across her chest and felt cleaner, and moved the soap faster on her stomach before switching the bar to her right hand so she could scrub up and down her back. She counted each of her ribs and could feel the soap hitting every vertebrae on her spine and she could barely remember a time when the bumps of her bones weren’t the most prominent thing on her back. Her throat was tight and her stomach was curled into painful knots and her spine felt like it was frozen solid and shattering into pieces, but she tried to ignore it so she could focus on what little pleasure was left in this world, so she could make it so her dead body did not look like a rotted corpse when Scott and Stiles and the pack finally found her. Lydia bent down to clean her legs and found that she couldn’t stand up anymore because the shift of what little weight she had was too much for the leg muscles she never used; she collapsed on the ground, but didn’t give up. She sat on the wet and hard surface of the outdoor stall and told herself to keep scrubbing, to keep putting soap into her infected wounds and keep holding on. She numbly recited each body part to herself as she cleaned, trying to name exactly what it was attached to and how. She wanted to forget the pain, and in the past (when her pain was something inside, something she couldn’t _quite_ pinpoint), science helped.

Sooner or later (her sense of time was a little skewed; it seemed like she spent an eternity here but she knew once she was back in their cellar, her time outside would seem like nothing more than the blink of an eye), her whole body was as free from dirt as possible, and she felt cleaner, like the layer of sweat that continually encased her was finally gone. Lydia pushed herself upward and her legs wobbled unsteadily as she forced herself upright. After a minute of painful movement, her joints clicked into place and she was able to grab the bottle of shampoo. She washed her hair, enjoying the smell and crying because of the pain and also because this was the last time she would ever wash her hair, and it hit her how stupid it was for her to care about that. To care that she was pulling more loose strands from her greasy head than ever before, to care that her hair had lost its shine and in a few hours would be just an ornament on a dead girl’s body. But she had always taken pleasure in her appearance, always liked the feeling of scrubbing herself clean, and now she was faced with the knowledge that she would never experience this again.

She wondered if it was worse, knowing you were going to die. She supposed that if you had the time to tell everyone you loved goodbye, had the chance to come to terms with separating from everyone and everything you’d known, then maybe death would be easier to handle. And if you had no idea it was coming, well, it would be easier for you; you wouldn’t need to worry about how people will mourn you and whether or not they will be happy without you. But knowing that death is coming and being unable to stop it, and yet unable to really say your goodbyes… that was _terrible_.

But if it means saving Scott, if it means sacrificing myself for Derek, it’s worth it, she reminded herself. In truth, she wanted to die. She wanted to leave all of this behind, to no longer be subject to the voices in her head or the danger she was constantly in. She wanted to be done. And how sick was that? She was willingly leaving her mother, father, and older sister, abandoning her pack. She had realized, after she confessed her fears to Derek, that she had only told him half truths the whole time, that she had let him see only what she could bear to see in herself; was it still self-sacrifice when you wanted to die, when you wanted nothing more than to close your eyes and never stop? Because she couldn’t imagine living on in a world where Allison was dead and Scott was dead and Stiles was as lost to her as either of them. She couldn’t go on being alone in the ways that she had been long before her best friend walked into her life. Maybe, she thought, maybe Allison would be in whatever afterlife she constructed for herself. And wouldn’t that be worth dying for?

The water shut off. Without the steady stream of ice water running over her skin, Lydia felt minutely warmer, but it did little to fight off the chill the followed every gentle breeze. She grabbed the tattered towel from the shelf and felt tears prick in the corners of her eyes as she moved her stiff arms around her body to try and rid herself of the water. Her hair was dripping wet but there was little she could do; Lydia didn’t have the strength to rub the towel over her hair for a long period of time, and this towel probably wasn’t going to hold much water, anyway. She searched the stall for a set of clothes to wear to block the cold, and felt panic rise from the pit of her stomach when she couldn’t find anything. Did he mean for her to be naked during her sacrifice?

Lydia collapsed onto the ground and pulled her threadbare towel tighter around her bones. She wanted to say that it didn’t bother her, wanted to pretend that she could stalk naked back to the cellar and wait for her dying breath, but this was inhumane. It was a final act of misery, one last way to dehumanize and abuse her before killing her. She started to heave, her breaths coming in and out, faster and faster, more frenzied than they had been in a while. She didn’t want to be naked. She wanted to be covered, to die with some kind of dignity left and he was stripping her of that. She scooped her sopping wet hair around her neck and held it close to her face, suddenly overtaken with the idea that he could shave all of this off and leave her nigh unrecognizable to any of her friends. She wouldn’t smell like Lydia or look like Lydia or anything, and she would just be a body instead of a tragedy, and she didn’t know if she could stand it.

In the distance, Lydia became aware of two sets of footsteps and the omnipresent sound of chains hitting against each other. She looked up from her corner in horror; she could feel her body shaking from both the cold and her panic. Within seconds that felt like hours, Clyde stepped through the threshold and into the shower stall, pulling a very naked Derek in along with him. Derek looked dizzy on his feet and very sickly green, like he might both throw up and pass out from the effort of walking. Lydia noticed that there was blood running from the back of Derek’s neck over his shoulders, and he was whimpering slight.

“Did you pull on the chains?” she croaked. “Did you pull on the chains and s-stab him in the neck?”

Clyde looked down at her, finally, and spat on the ground. “S’what if I did, girl,” he said, a growl emanating from the back of his throat. “It was the only way he’d move.”

Clyde pulled on the chains again, and Derek stumbled forward and collapsed on the ground underneath the shower head. The prongs poised around the front of his neck drove themselves into his flesh, and Derek started coughing small flecks of blood. Despite the way her body burned with cold and hurt, Lydia moved forward and started looking for a way to unhook his choke collar. Clyde grabbed her arm and squeezed, and Lydia thought she heard the bone in her wrist give an unhealthy pop. “Do you want him to die before your son can be brought back?” she hissed, only barely aware of what she was saying. “Just let me clean out the wounds. Let me get this collar off of him and clean them out before he dies!”

With more force than was necessary, Clyde threw Lydia backward. She fell onto her back and whimpered. Her back felt like it had a million needles stabbing it, over and over, and she knew that a bruise would be forming all along her right side within the hour. Clyde didn’t even look over, instead carefully removing the choke collar from Derek’s neck. “You get him cleaned up, banshee,” he grunted. “He reeks of shit and blood.”

Clyde left them, and Lydia moved forward. She wished, more than anything, that she could have at least had a shirt, had something to cover her breasts and her crotch, but Clyde offered her nothing and so she took nothing. She could see, upon further inspection, that the skin around the holes in Derek’s neck had turned a blackish purple, and the veins stemming from it looked infected. She could trace the small veins in his skin by their color; soap, she realized, was not going to help this, but she needed to try. The water turned on, and Lydia winced as the water streamed down her back. Derek grunted, and his eyes fluttered open momentarily.

“Come on, Derek, come on,” Lydia muttered under her breath. She pushed herself up and her muscles screeched in agony, but she needed the soap from the top shelf to do anything. She grabbed the soap and the shampoo and cheap conditioner, and she again fell to her knees. The bottles dropped out of her hands but she didn’t care. She pulled Derek’s head onto her bare lap and positioned it so his neck was on one thigh and his head was hanging off of her leg. This way, at least, he wouldn’t inhale so much water from the shower that he would possibly drown. Lydia started scrubbing, and she heard Derek groan in pain as she rubbed the soap over his puncture wounds. Her skin was numbing to the cold, and Lydia could barely feel her fingertips anymore, but she still kept rubbing the soap over his body. She cleaned the blood from his neck, and moved the soap in methodical circles down his back, scrubbing away the dirt and sweat and grime that accumulated during his time in the cellar. His skin had taken on a brown tinge that was slowly washing away into the drain, and Lydia ignored the disgust in her belly when she cleaned off his butt and legs.

His back was clean, but Derek was still not moving. With great effort and using whatever strength she had left, Lydia flipped his body over back onto the ground, taking care not to press his still manacled wrists onto the prongs. Her body ached and she could feel the muscles in her arms burn and shake with the effort, but she ignored everything but her desire to keep Derek alive. She saw that literal drops of poison were falling out of the bloody wounds on his neck, and she wondered, briefly, if the soap had healing properties other than killing bacteria. She wouldn’t doubt that the werewolf had the means to cleanse himself of whatever poisons he had lying around the house, and he would want Derek’s body to be as healthy as possible. Lydia made sure the soap was clean of all dirt and grime, and then she scrubbed it over his neck.

Derek’s eyes opened, and he immediately focused on her face before his eyes trailed down to the rest of her naked body. She was surprised to see a blush on his cheeks before he turned away. “I- I’m sorry…” he stammered weakly, but she paid him no mind. She just kept cleaning him.

“People have seen me naked before,” she said quietly as she rubbed the soap over Derek’s bare chest. “And, before you go to cover yourself up, I’ve seen a penis before, too. It’s really not that big of a deal. I’m sure there was a point in time that I would have loved for you to see me naked.” The words spilled out of her mouth in a soothing tone, her brain too focused on what she was doing to really censor what she said.

He glanced back over at her to shoot her a look, and she shrugged. It was true. When she first saw Derek, she knew he was attractive. Had he not been wanted for murder, she probably would have had sex with him if he’d asked. Hell, even with his murder charges, she might have. It would have been edgy, something she could use against Jackson, something to add on to her list of conquests to make her feel powerful. But he never asked, and she certainly didn’t go after him, and now just the thought of sleeping with Derek put a sour taste in her mouth. He was her friend, her pack mate, her brother. They had been through too much together. And, anyway, she hadn’t been able to think of anyone as anything other than passably attractive since… She couldn’t even think his name without wanting to cry.

“Even so,” Derek said. “He’s disgusting. I can’t believe he made you do this.”

She rubbed the expanse of skin between his hip bones, and was amazed to find that there was still some muscle right underneath the surface. Derek’s body had dealt better with the lack of nutrition and movement. “He didn’t make me,” she said. “You passed out, and he was just going to leave you there in a pool of water. I… I just couldn’t leave you there.”

Derek sat up, grabbed the soap from her hand, and started washing himself. Already, the soap was doing its job of clearing his wounds. Already, he was looking a little less green and a little less sick. He still looked weak, and she could see the way his hands shook as he washed himself and the way he winced when his moved his wrists in just the right way for them to be impaled. But he was looking more like Derek and less like a dead man, and she was grateful. Grateful she could do this one thing after getting him in this mess.

With the soap out of her hand and her purpose removed, the pain from Lydia’s wrist (probably fractured and even possibly broken) plus the bruise that was already forming came back full force. The adrenaline that had surged through her when Clyde let Derek’s limp body fall onto the wet, hard concrete subsided, and she let out a small whimper. Derek glanced over only to see her staring at her puffy wrist and then took it into his hands. He held it up to examine it, his face contorting with anger. “I’m going to kill him,” Derek said as he looked at it. Lydia slowly pulled it out of his grasp and moved out of the way of the cold water, going back to huddle with her towel.

He continued to scrub himself, still sitting, still naked, and she stared at him without really paying attention. Scott would have to get here in time to save Derek, she thought. She figured that, if Derek were passed out, then Clyde would think it worked until he opened his eyes, and in his weakened state, Derek wouldn’t have a chance of winning. So Scott would need to get here after the ceremony was finished but before Derek was found out. And, hopefully, seeing her dead would be enough to put Scott over the edge and defeat Clyde. Maybe, she hoped, he would be smart enough to bring Mr. Argent with him, someone who was more than willing to kill those he saw as evil, unlike Scott. The voices in her head swirled, and again she saw Scott standing in the doorway of the cellar, and her name crossed his lips and she felt him die, but it wasn’t his name the voices were chanting, it was hers. She clung to that knowledge. That maybe, maybe, they were telling her that this wouldn’t happen, that she had to die to prevent this from happening. Her voices had yet to be wrong.

Even when it came to Derek’s transformation, they weren’t wrong; she could hear them chanting his name but it felt different than a death. It felt like something was ending and he was changing and that, she supposed, was what had made her scream. And she took comfort in the fact that, even though she could see Scott dying, it didn’t really feel like a death, either. Just a change.

“Lydia?”

She looked up and saw that the water had cut off, and Derek was staring at her. Clyde was standing in the doorway, holding two sets of clothes. Both piles were white, but he was saying something that she didn’t quite catch and she couldn’t figure out what was going on until Derek stood up and moved toward Clyde, taking the piles into his arms. “This one is for you,” he said softly, and she took the bundle from his arms, unwrapping it easily. It was a sleeveless white dress made out of a thick material that was impossible to see through, and a pair of white cotton underwear. She felt a rush of relief roll over her that she wouldn’t complete this ceremony naked, that at least Scott and Kira and Stiles would find her in something feminine before realizing that she was nothing but bones and skin. She pulled on the underwear quickly and then slipped on the dress, amazed to feel the soft fabric envelop her. The skirt fell to her ankles, and the fabric draped around her body. She probably looked ethereal, like a true woman in white.

Clyde tossed her something and she caught it with her good hand before realizing that it was a heavy silver comb. The handle of the comb had intricate designs carved into the silver that, when she looked at them, filled her with the same rush of knowledge and dread that usually accompanied a prediction of death. There were leaves etched into a circle around different fruits, and she could swear that the lines were shaking slightly, vibrating, emitting some low noise that she couldn’t tune into. There were faces in the design, she could see them, but every time she looked at one too long it seemed to disappear or change, and she could feel power emanating from it, radiating into her palms. “What is this?” she asked, tearing her eyes away from the comb to look at Derek.

He was standing in a pair of white pants with no shirt on. She guessed it would have been too risky for Clyde to remove the pronged manacles around Derek’s wrists since he was looking more healthy after his shower, so the compromise was Derek only wearing pants. “He wants you to brush your hair with it,” Derek said lightly. “He said that it’s a banshee comb, imbued with power by both druids and banshees over the years. Apparently, hundreds of years ago, the banshees of the isle had similar combs to give them power.”

“How did it give them power?” Lydia asked suddenly.

“He didn’t say.”

Lydia twirled the comb again in her palm, and then started moving it through her hair. The voices in her head buzzed louder with every swipe, and she again felt her connection to the life around her increase. The comb must have been a receptacle for power, she thought, or maybe it contained trapped souls. She wondered if that was possible, for druids and banshees to work together to trap a soul into an inanimate object. She couldn’t discount the possibility, not since she was able to reconnect Peter’s soul to his dead body and bring him back to life. Who knows what power she had locked deep within her, blocked by a lack of knowledge and a lack of desire to manipulate the lives and essences of those around her. Clyde walked back inside the stall and handed Lydia a black elastic tie that she assumed came from her room. He commanded her to put her hair into a braid, and she complied, looping large sections of her hair around the others, fashioning her red mane into a decently long braid down her back.

Her swollen wrist was starting to turn black, and it was hard to maneuver the large clumps of hair with only one truly functioning wrist. But she worked, and soon her wet hair was under control, dripping water down the back of her dress and onto the ground. Clyde and Derek watched her finish, and then Clyde grabbed Lydia’s swollen wrist and Derek’s chains, giving them a good tug to get them both moving. Lydia stumbled along, her knees barely able to handle the impact of her feet hitting the ground, and Derek shuffled next to her, wincing in pain every time Clyde tugged hard on his chains to get him to walk. They walked past the cellar and past the tree, rounding the house until they were facing a large stand made out of wood and ringed with different objects. Next to the wooden stand was a large pile of wood that looked ripe for a bonfire.

Lydia stared at them, and it dawned on her that this must be where he was going to make the sacrifice. It was an altar. An altar made of wood (most likely yew), with black, white and silver candles on the surface, along with red and orange leaves, different fruits, and other small objects that must have belonged to Clyde’s son. Clyde brought them closer, and she still stared at them, trying to identify what was on the table. There were pumpkins and pomegranates, small nuts and acorns that were wreathed with fall leaves. Somehow, in the back of her mind, Lydia knew that these were meant to represent the idea of life and rebirth, the eternal cycle. Nuts that would grow into trees, leaves that fell from trees. The pomegranate was the fruit of Persephone in Greek myth, the wife of Hades whose descent to the underworld every year marked the changing of the harvest season. Lydia wondered if pomegranates meant something else in Celtic mythology, if there was some knowledge of her own apparent culture that she was missing.

In the middle of the altar was a dark goblet, and next to the goblet was an even darker knife made out of a stone Lydia recognized to be obsidian. Clyde walked forward, Derek’s chains still in his hand, and grabbed both the goblet and the knife from the altar.

“What are you doing?” Derek demanded as Clyde advanced on him. The man pulled on Derek’s chains and Derek screamed out, falling to his knees. Clyde set the goblet down and grabbed one of Derek’s wrists, and Lydia tried to run for them but she stumbled forward in her long dress and with her weak legs and could only watch, helplessly from the ground, as Clyde sliced opened Derek’s palm with the obsidian knife and drained some of the blood into the goblet.

Clyde looked over at her and inclined his head. “This is for you, girl,” he said gruffly. “You’ll need it to drink when we start.”

Her stomach turned and Lydia dry heaved repeatedly into the ground. She wanted to throw up but she knew nothing would come out; nothing had gone in for more than a few days. He wanted her to consume Derek’s blood, for who knows that reason. She wished she knew if any of this had a meaning, if there was some book of banshee mythology in this man’s house that was telling him that all of this was necessary or if he was just making it up as he went. If he had just heard, once, that this would work and was doing it. But then again, he had the comb, and she couldn’t deny that there was true power locked within that silver. Some of this had to have basis in fact. Some of this had to mean something. She heard the rustle of chains, and saw Clyde drag Derek to the altar, dripping blood onto the hard wood surface. Derek growled, but Clyde paid him no mind, just cutting another line into Derek’s arm to drain him of more blood. She wondered, briefly, what meaning that had. Clyde kicked him away and Derek fell backward, out of her line of sight.

In her peripheral vision, Lydia saw Derek grip his bleeding palm. It wasn’t healing like it should have been; even with the wolfsbane running through his veins, his cuts usually began to heal after they were dealt. There must be something about the knife, Lydia thought, for it to cut him and leave him bleeding. Clyde surveyed the goblet and, leaving Derek in the grass, walked over to Lydia. He grabbed her bruised wrist and sliced into her palm, and she screamed in pain as blood trickled out of the cut and into the goblet. Then he dragged her, too, to the altar, and again sliced into the painful throb of her wrist to drip her blood on the altar and allow it to mix with Derek’s blood.

Before the wail had fully left her throat, Derek lunged at Clyde’s back, trying to loop the chains around his throat. “Leave her alone,” Derek growled. “Don’t touch her.” But Clyde just dropped the knife and grabbed Derek’s chains, yanking them down. As Derek tipped forward, Clyde slammed his elbow into Derek’s nose, and Lydia heard Derek’s bone crunch against the hard force of Clyde’s blow. Derek stumbled backward and Clyde freed himself from Derek’s makeshift noose, before turning and hitting him, once, outside the head. Derek’s eyes rolled until his irises weren’t showing and his eyelids closed, and Lydia let out a pitiful whimper.

“He’ll be fine once it’s time,” Clyde said, and then lifted Derek’s limp body over one shoulder. With the goblet in one hand and Derek in the other, he motioned toward Lydia to follow him. She thought, then, about running away, about leaving Derek behind and seeing how far she could make it in these woods before her aching muscles and sore joints gave up, and she collapsed and was devoured by wild animals. But she knew she couldn’t do it, and if she was going to die either way, she wanted to die in order to keep her friends alive. And if she ran, now, then Derek would be dead within the hour. It was what Scott would do, if he were here, she thought. He would wait.

Once they were in the cellar, Clyde roughly shoved Lydia down the stairs, and she collapsed in a heap at the bottom. She staggered upward and crawled over to the tree roots, where she brushed the dirt off of her dress and almost passed out. He didn’t even bother chaining her up again. They both knew she only had enough energy to make it up the stairs one more time, and she would probably pass out at the top from the effort. Her hand was bleeding into the dirt, and Lydia took care to keep her blood off of her dress, a small memory of a white dress stained with blood popping into her mind. She must have dreamt of something similar before, she thought. That had to be it. And she couldn’t let that come true.

Derek was dragged down, and Clyde didn’t seem to care about the prongs digging into his skin as he fastened Derek back into place. “I’ll come get you when it’s time,” he said. “It’ll be a few hours yet until yer fully ready.”

She didn’t ask him what he meant. She just watched him walk out.

* * *

They had been in the car for well over nine hours, and were just barely reaching Portland. Peter was fucking with them. He had to be fucking with them, because Stiles knew that it should only take about eight hours to get to Portland from Beacon Hills, and then they still had to drive another hour or so to even reach where Lydia was being kept. Peter was fucking with them, and Stiles wasn’t going to be able to reach her in time, and she’d die thinking they didn’t care about her. Thinking they hadn’t even come looking for her.

Stiles had his head on the passenger door window, and though he was exhausted from sleeping less than ten hours in the past, say, 10 days, he couldn’t keep his eyes shut. At some point, Scott had made him switch seats with Kira because his vision started to get blurry (not that he cared, but apparently endangering the lives of supernatural creatures could possibly be a problem), and so now she was driving, and he wasn’t, and he hated that she had a serious need to obey the law at all costs. He watched the world rush by - not fast enough, in his opinion, but the last ten times he had told Kira to speed up, she would glance in the mirror to Scott and he would get another lecture on how, if they were caught by law enforcement with a handcuffed older man who can lie through his teeth, they would never get to Lydia - and concentrated on the ways that he planned to make Peter’s demise as painful as possible. On what instruments he would use, on how he would keep him sedated. Stiles had heard from Danny that there was a specific kind of wolfsbane that could incapacitate rather than kill, and Stiles imagined shooting that into Peter’s veins. To get him back for everything he had done to them since he first came into their lives. Everything he had done to Lydia and to Scott, mostly.

“You are all such a boring group of teenagers, did you know that? I was expecting a little more talk from you all, maybe about what will happen when you finally see Lydia again, that is if she’s even alive-” Peter grunted angrily, and Stiles, who had been ignoring all of Peter’s baits to speak the entire trip, finally turned to look at him, only to see Malia wiping blood from her claws onto his shirt.

Peter looked down at the crescent shaped wound on his thigh and then back at his daughter, who was looking out at the same expanse of trees at which Stiles had been staring. “What was that for?” he snarled, his voice curling nastily around the words with a deep undercurrent of anger. “I could kill you, you know. These handcuffs are nothing to me, simply a nicety for your sake.” Peter nearly spat the last few words, and Stiles could clearly see the fangs descended into his mouth. Scott, who was on the other side of Peter, was watching the entire exchange with a tensed fist, his eyes never leaving Peter.

Malia shrugged, still looking out the window. “You’ll get over it. I heard you heal fast,” she said calmly before glancing down at her claws to make sure they were, in fact, blood free.  Peter let out a stream of curses and words that Stiles imagined should never be said to a teenager, much less his own daughter, but Peter didn’t care. She was unfazed by his anger, choosing instead to look almost bored when he growled a threat to her under his breath about tearing her entrails out through her mouth. Stiles wondered when Malia had gotten so good at aggravating Peter, at seeing through his lies and his manipulations. She was, after all, the one who could see through Peter’s nervousness about Lydia, who could bait him just like he tried to bait others, even when Stiles couldn’t, even when all he could think about was Lydia taking her last breath. Since he had known Peter, he had only seen two people handle Peter with relative ease: Derek and Lydia. Now, he thought, he would add a third, unexpected entry to that list: Malia. If they, no, once they got Lydia and Derek back, in one piece, they would both be proud.

They were all silent for a few minutes, and Stiles turned back to his passenger door window, trying to be transfixed with the moving trees. But then Stiles would get caught up in the hues of orange and red, the last vestiges of fall color looming through the Oregon trees, and his mind would wander back to Lydia, and his heart would start beating faster and he hated that it did, because he knew that three of the four other people in the car could hear it and, probably, were listening for different reasons; Scott because he couldn’t help but hear the heartbeats of his pack, something he had told Stiles earlier; Peter so he can use any feelings against Stiles; and Malia, because she was so used to tuning in to the beat of his heart. Stiles felt guilty about Malia, about the way that she had to break up with him because he couldn’t do it himself, how she still came with them and still wanted to save Lydia. The few times he had glanced in the side mirror, he had caught her staring at him, and he felt pinpricks of hot shame travel from his gut to his heart and then to his throat.

She deserved better than him. God damn, did she deserve someone who could actually, fully love her the way that he loved Lydia.

“You’re going to want to make a left here,” Peter said through gritted teeth. Kira slammed on the brakes and his Jeep gave a little whine, but Stiles didn’t care. She mumbled an apology, either to him or to the brakes themselves, but he could barely catch what she said. His stops were often much more violent than hers. His Jeep could handle it.

The road was barely visible across the median, a worn down path covered in gravel that led into the woods. Stiles knew this had to be it, had to be the path to get to her, to save her. “Are you sure?” Kira asked dubiously. “It looks a little… dangerous.”

“Life is dangerous, sweetheart,” Peter said. “And if you think that walking into an alpha’s home and taking Lydia back is going to be easy and fun, you’re sorely mistaken.”

Kira frowned and glared at the steering wheel, and Stiles felt for her. She didn’t say anything in response, instead just quietly pulling further to the left and then pushing her foot down onto the gas pedal to enter the wooded path. Stiles’ breath hitched as soon as they crossed from the highway onto the minor roadway, and he was suddenly alert. Every divergent path could lead to her, he thought, and the note he had brought to give to her (finally) felt heavy in his pant pocket. He wondered what kind of a situation they would be wandering into what it would be like when they got there, whether or not they would be interrupting the Samhain ceremony.

He wondered about all of this, and then his mind drifted back to Lydia and he almost collapsed under the weight of the anxiety he felt about seeing her again. What she would look like. What she would say. If she would even be alive. He didn’t want to even think about it but now that she was within his grasp, now that the possibility of seeing her again was greater than it had been in a month, he felt the worry in the pit of his stomach. Would she even be alive?

No, she had to be alive. The question wasn’t whether she would be alive.

Would she even be glad to see them, beyond the whole “being saved from certain doom” aspect of their rescue? It had been a month where the only contact was their connection through Meredith, and before that, their connection had been even smaller. She didn’t talk to them. She didn’t interact with them. She tried everything she could to stay away from them, and if Lydia thought she was fooling everyone by saying the school put her in all of these classes that just didn’t quite align with anyone else's, she was kidding herself. It didn’t occur to him how much he knew about how she was avoiding him until, on the ride up, he had started thinking about it.

Thinking about how, when she saw him even out of the corner of her eye, she would start moving away from him into the closest place that he wouldn’t, or couldn’t, follow. How she tried avoiding him at nearly every turn, and he wondered if maybe she wouldn’t be as happy to see him as he was to see her. But it didn’t matter, not really. She could continue to avoid him for the rest of her natural life and, he thought, as long as he was able to get her back, to give her one last hug and see her, breathing and alive, he would let her go.

His fingers resumed their continual dance over his leg, which in turn was bouncing up and down, filled with the nervous energy that had nearly always inhabited his body. Scott said something to Kira, and Stiles didn’t even bother listening, his mind filled too far for him to concentrate on anything other than his own thoughts. Than the questions that were running through his mind and the images he saw and everything else that was happening within him. Even if she wanted to avoid him, he resolved, he would at least tell her that he loved her. Really, truly loved her. He needed to let her know that he felt it, that he still felt it. If she wanted to run away from him, if she couldn’t stand the fact that it was his face that ended Allison’s life and probably his fault that she was gone, then at least she would know. At least she could know what she was running from.

He took a deep breath. His tongue glided across his lips, and Stiles closed his eyes, letting his head rest against the window pane for only a moment to try and calm himself. Scott and Kira were talking, and their voices blurred together and he felt light headed, tired for a moment. The easy tones of their voices lulled him and he blinked, lazily, his eyes straining to stay open. He was so close, he thought, so close to her and now he was finally falling under the spell of sleep.

“It’s up ahead,” Peter said, and Stiles jerked himself away from the window. The wooded path was finally giving way to a clearing, and his heart pounded into his chest. Kira slowed the Jeep and then it came to a complete stop, and he was vaguely aware of her shifting into park from drive. He fumbled with the latch of his seatbelt for a second or two, his mind racing so fast that it was hard for him to remember exactly what he needed to do to free himself. Press down, he thought, and then pull. The seat belt pulled backward on its own and his hand flew to the door, grasping the handle easily and readying himself to take his first shaking steps from the car onto the ground of the place Lydia had been for the past month, kidnapped and miserable. Then he heard Scott say something about being able to smell her, and he lost all of the anxiety in him.

Stiles jumped out of the car, and he was barely aware that his feet even touched the ground before he took off running. The house looked nearly abandoned; it was a small wood structure whose shutters were falling off of the windows, and the screen door was torn down the middle like a fight had taken place and the house was the sore loser. It was in a clearing, ringed by trees, with a small shed off to one side that looked like it had a shower stall attached to the outside, and in some far part of his mind that was, for some reason, thinking of something other than saving her, than making sure she was okay, Stiles wondered what kind of person showered outside, what kind of person would choose to go out when the weather was this chilly and force themselves under water. But the thing that grabbed his attention and held it was the gigantic towering tree to the right of the house. It was so close to the rundown wooden structure that he could swear it was supporting it somehow, that the tree was what was keeping the house upright.

He ran toward it. His feet pounded the earth and he ran toward the tree, putting everything he had into reaching that house, into searching it and finding her and holding her. He didn’t hear any other car doors slam shut like his had and Stiles couldn’t even tell if there were other people around him, but he assumed that there were, that his friends had followed him in a frenzy to get to her. They were supernatural, they were faster, they should be right next to him. He just couldn’t see them, couldn’t even bother to focus on anything but the idea of her. He ran. His heart pumped and he could swear that every beat was her name, over and over again, in rapid succession: LydiaLydialydia _lydialydia_.

“Stiles!” Scott’s voice rang out, clear in the eerily quiet area. “Her scent is coming from the back of the house!” Scott was closer to Stiles now, probably only a few feet behind and quickly overtaking him. Stiles glanced to the side as he rounded the tree, only to see Scott’s face contorted to a wolf’s growl and Malia a few feet away on Scott’s other side with her claws extended. He pushed himself to keep up with them, to match pace with Malia and Scott who were running with him, determined to find Lydia and bring her home. Stiles heart nearly leapt into his throat. If her scent was here, then Lydia must be somewhere close by; he was finally going to find her, he thought. She had to be here, just out of his reach, just out of his vision. They all cleared the tree at the same time, ringing around to the back of the house at the same moment.

Whatever hope he had been clinging to exploded, and Stiles skidded to a stop, his eyes desperately searching for any glimpse of her. There was nothing here but stage covered in pumpkins and leaves and fruits, with no sign of Lydia and Derek. It must have been the altar, he thought, the thing that her captor was going to use to end her life, but she wasn’t anywhere near it. The clearing extended for a few feet in every direction. And beyond that, the line of trees resumed, the sunlight filtering through the darkness the trees tried to cast on the ground. Stiles turned to say something to Scott, to ask him what the fuck was up with his nose that it had messed up so much, because if he hadn’t noticed Lydia wasn’t here. But Scott, too, had stopped, and was staring at the thin altar with horror on his face. And when Stiles glanced over at Malia, she too was staring straight at it with an open mouth and a look of disgust and sorrow in her eyes.

Stiles took another step forward, straining his eyes to see whatever had caught the attention of both Scott and Malia. But there was nothing out of place, no chopped up body parts or bloody instruments lying around. “Scott,” Stiles said slowly, pulling his eyes away from the altar to fully take in the look on his best friend’s face, “what is it?”

Scott’s jaw quivered, and he didn’t look back at Stiles. His eyes were still stuck on the altar. “Her… scent,” he said. “It’s covered in her scent.” Stiles licked his lips, about to ask how that was even possible if she wasn’t anywhere in sight, but before he could speak, Scott was talking again. His voice was low. “Her blood is all over it. So is Derek’s.”

For a moment, all Stiles could see was the blur of his best friend’s face, and then he blinked. A tear fell down his face followed by another, and Stiles whipped his head from Scott to look back at the altar. Despite his shocked tears, he could clearly see what had shocked and dismayed his friends. Her blood was all over it. They were too late. They were too late, somehow, because of Peter and because of the distance and because of everything. A lump formed in his throat and his stomach pulled itself in knots, working themselves around one another quickly, turning his insides into nothing. His fingers tingled, and before he knew what was happening, Stiles was running again. His vision tunneled and he ran, focused completely on the altar.

“Stiles!” Scott called out from behind him again. “I don’t… I don’t think…”

He couldn’t hear anything after that. A strangled cry left Stiles’ throat, and he grabbed one of the pumpkins sitting easily on the edge of the wooden surface and threw it on the ground. The orange rind broke, and Stiles slammed his foot into the skin of the fruit, barely able to feel it crack underneath his weight. He slammed his foot into it again, and again, watching the slime of the pumpkin slip out from its casing and slide onto the ground. Stiles picked up another piece of the sacrificial altar, one was slick with red blood that was either Derek’s or hers, and hurled it with all of his might toward the giant tree. It was a pomegranate, he realized as it sailed through the air, and once it hit it lazily bounced off and rolled into the roots without the satisfaction of exploding. Stiles didn’t care, though; he had turned his attention back to the altar, and with one sweep of his arm, he pushed off nearly everything (including the pictures and other personal items) onto the ground. He didn’t take in the picture as he smashed it with another heavy pumpkin, and he wasn’t aware that, as he angrily broke everything he could get his hands on, he was sobbing loud enough for both Malia and Scott to hear him. He honestly couldn’t say that he cared.

The cock of a gun finally broke Stiles’ concentration, and he turned to see a man step off the back porch with a shotgun in his hands. “What the hell do you think you’re doin’, boy,” the man said thickly with a snarl on the word boy. Stiles looked down at the mess he had created on the ground with the items on the altar, and then at his hands that were covered in blood and the insides of nearly every fruit on the table. Stiles looked back up at the figure and opened his mouth to say something, to shout at him, but it all happened so quickly. The man lifted up the barrel of the gun and aimed it at Stiles, and Stiles could see the barrel sway for a moment or two before it finally settled on him. The man pulled the trigger, and Stiles heard the boom before he felt the impact of a bullet in his shoulder. He stumbled backward and hit the wooden altar with a heavy thud. For a second, it was like nothing had happened, like he hadn’t even been hit. He couldn’t hear the echo of the gun, couldn’t hear the bullet rip through his bone and skin, couldn’t feel the hole form or the pain that came with it, and certainly couldn’t hear the angry howl that Scott gave a second after the gun was shot. He was in shock, he figured, because he should be feeling something other than amazement that someone would actually shoot at him. There should be pain and misery and something other than him blinking.

Stiles looked up and saw that both Scott and Malia were in shock, too, and then Malia let out a howl of frustration, turning to the man with the gun. She swiped at him, fury written on her face, and engaged in battle with the guy with the gun, her claws out and teeth bared. Scott shouted something after her, probably trying to get her to stop, but once the man hit Malia with the butt of his rifle (Stiles heard the whimper and then she was back again, trying to throw herself at him), Scott ran toward him. He saw Scott drag his claws up the guy’s arm but he was fast, inhumanly fast, and before Scott could finish, this guy had already spun around and torn into Scott’s own flesh with his claws. Claws. That made sense, Stiles realized. The was the alpha that had taken Lydia. This is the one that Peter had made a deal with to get Lydia out of the way. And, from what Stiles could tell, he was good. He was good fighter, strong and fast and a quick thinker, because even a true alpha and a werecoyote could barely land a single hit on the guy when they were fighting together. He must have been a good fighter to be able to last so long in the supernatural world, to be so old and so alive unlike a lot of people they knew.

Someone was talking to him, and it took Stiles a few seconds to be able to focus on the voice. Kira was crouched next to him, trying to get a good look at the hole in his shoulder. “...going to be okay, alright? I’m going to tie some cloth around it, okay? I’m just going to have to sterilize it with electricity. Can that happen?” Kira reached out and ran her finger near the open wound, touching it lightly before looking at his face. She looked concerned and a little nervous, and when she pulled her hand back Stiles saw that her fingertips had blood on them. He didn’t even realize that he was bleeding so much, or really at all.

He touched his hand to the hole and it came back with fresh blood, which must have meant he was bleeding. Shit.  He knew that bullet wounds bled (he had seen his father with more than enough to last him for a thousand lifetimes) but he didn’t even register that he was injured. It took him a few seconds to take in what happened, to realized that it hurt, that he was in pain. That his shoulder felt like flames were dancing around the torn flesh. Stiles hand flew back to his shoulder and his nose scrunched. He gripped the hole and closed his eyes. Kira was repeating her idea of electrifying some fabric to sterilize it, and he cracked an eyelid to look at her. “I don’t think so,” he said through gritted teeth, looking up at her. “I don’t actually think you can do that.”

She frowned, and he frowned back at her. He could tell she was just trying to help. But he wasn’t the one that needed the help the most, he knew, and now that the pain was flooding his system, whatever haze of shock that was there before had left. Malia let out another pained grunt and both of them turned to her, watching her grasp her leg in frustration before taking off running again. Kira’s hand curled around the hilt of her blade. “Look, I can handle this,” Stiles said quickly. “Go help them.” She bit her lip and started to protest but he cut her off. “That guy… he… Lydia’s blood was all over this thing,” Stiles said quietly. “Please, Kira. I can’t help them. But you can.”

Kira nodded and took off in the direction of the fight. Stiles eyelids drifted close once more and he saw Lydia’s face looking back at him. He didn’t want to believe she was dead, and until he saw the body ( _if there even was a body, if this guy didn’t just rip her and Derek apart_ ) he didn’t know if he could. He whispered her name and the back of his head fell backward onto the wood.

* * *

Claws sunk into Scott’s forearm and he used the few seconds it took for this guy to pull them out again to land a solid uppercut into his jaw. Off to the side, Malia pushed herself off of the ground and came charging toward them, attempting to grab their opponent by his shoulders and throw him to the ground so she could pin him and slash out his throat. At least, that was what she kept yelling, kept shouting: “I’m going to take you down and rip out your throat for that.”

If Scott had his way, if he had been able to control the situation, he would have waited a few seconds after Stiles got shot to attack. He would have laid out some kind of plan (not that it would have worked) or at least said, hey, let me go first and then you can come behind me and take him out. As it was, though, Malia attacked first with fury and then Scott came after her to try and keep them all alive. He hadn’t even been able to smell the supernatural scent from this alpha, and it wasn’t until he unleashed his claws for the first time and let his incisors elongate into fangs that Scott realized what they were dealing with. He should have known, he told himself, he should have known that whoever took Derek out had to be fast and strong and lethal, but he hadn’t expected him to be able to suppress his supernatural scent as a cover. He hadn’t expected this.

The guy stumbled backward as Malia rammed into him, the force of her assault finally enough to throw him off his feet. Kira ran up behind him with her sword drawn, but he seemed to expect this; with ease, he shifted his body to make Malia topple past him, and she rolled right into Kira’s legs, taking them both out. Malia cursed loudly.

Scott charged at him, drawing his right hand far behind him before bringing it down in a wide arc to meet the guy’s face. He moved as fast as he possibly could, trying to use these few moments where their opponent was focused on the two girls as an advantage, but the man had senses that were far better than Scott’s own. He swung his left arm upward to counter Scott’s blow, and though it left his stomach wide open to a good punch from Scott, it wasn’t nearly as powerful as his claws slashing down the front of this man’s chest would have been. The man then swept Scott’s feet out from under him and backed up as Malia barreled toward him, claws slashing at everything she could find.

He dug his fingers briefly into the dirt below them. They had come here for Lydia and instead found her blood drenching wood, found some alpha with a decent shot and an even better left hook, found an old house. But she wasn’t here. He could smell her scent everywhere but knew that it was just because her blood had permeated the air, that her smell had latched on to him. Scott couldn’t sense her. And he strained, trying to find her heart beat, trying to hear anything but Stiles’ hard breathing and Kira’s panting and Malia’s growls, trying to feel her or smell her but all he could smell was blood and sweat and dirt. It felt like everytime he started to move past that, started to concentrate on other things (because she couldn’t be dead, he told himself, it didn’t feel like she was dead and that was what he clung to, the fact that he hadn’t seen her dead and some alpha sense told him she wasn’t), he was dragged back into the fight.

Kira stumbled backward and Scott’s attention jerked from the ground, where he could swear he heard a faint heartbeat (or maybe it was just Peter), back into the fight. Kira had sustained a minor wound to her torso, and she was clutching her sword pretty tightly. He pushed himself up and bounded to her, taking her into his arms. “Are you okay?” he asked quietly, looking at another cut on her cheek that she must have just gotten.

“I’m fine,” she said, a little breathless. Malia slammed into the ground a few feet away from them, and Scott looked up from Kira’s eyes and back over to the powerhouse of his pack. Malia was bleeding, too, just like him and Kira, but she kept getting up and going at it. Scott wondered if it was because he shot Stiles or because of Derek and Lydia’s scent that filled the air, but he figured it didn’t matter. She was a fighter, and she was going to keep attacking until she couldn’t go on in order to protect her pack. Such a change, he thought, from the first time he met her and she stated that, if it wasn’t any benefit to her, there was no reason to attack.

Scott pushed away from Kira and dove in front of Malia, deflecting a kick that was aimed toward her neck. He latched on to the guy’s ankle and sunk his claws into both sides until he hit bone, pulling downward and then, once he finally heard the man acknowledge the pain with an angry grunt, pulled out his claws. He was rewarded with a swift kick to the ribs that Scott swore cracked something, and he rolled away before the guy could kick him again in the same spot to fully break them. Kira came over top of him and sliced upward with her sword, cutting a clear line onto their opponent's chest, and then she gracefully spun so the blade danced down his arm, splitting the skin easily. Scott heard the sizzle of singed flesh and knew Kira sent electricity down her blade, and he heard the man cuss at her.

He stood up slowly, feeling his side to make sure that his ribs weren’t so cracked that he would have to set them before his accelerated healing kicked in. Malia joined Kira, and it seemed like, with the damage the man had sustained plus their repeated attacks, they were making headway. With a beta, a kitsune, and an alpha going up against one alpha, one would hold that they were able to take him out. Scott glanced back at Stiles, and was alarmed at the red color that was dripping down his chest but relieved to see his friend was watching the fight intently and hadn’t yet lost so much blood his face was pale. Stiles looked over at Scott and nodded, affirming that he was okay, that he was alive. That he would stay alive. Scott wanted to tell him to go into the house, to start looking for Lydia, but the words hadn’t even formed in his mouth when Malia hit him in his already injured rib cage, and they both slammed into the ground.

Malia fell off of Scott and laid on her back for a few seconds, gently touching each one of her newly sustained wounds. She glanced over at Scott, and then looked back at Kira and the man, and Scott turned his gaze toward his girlfriend. She was gripping his arm, and Scott heard her electricity _pop_ before the man grunted in pain. Kira was holding her own as well as she could but it was hard for her, he could tell, and without a moment’s thought he bounded upward and right back into the action. He pulled Kira out of the way of a blow she wasn’t looking for, and then bared his fangs as he dove toward the man’s chest. Scott sunk his teeth into flesh and jerked upward, spitting out blood and skin while the man howled in pain. They could win, Scott thought; not kill him, obviously, but they could knock him out without much more trouble. If Malia could just land one more heavy kick to his head, then Scott was sure this guy would be out cold.

“Scott!”

It was faint, but he recognized that voice. _Lydia._ Lydia’s voice was calling for him, and he paused momentarily, trying to figure out where it had come from and how to get to it. She was here. She was here and she was alive enough and awake enough to be calling for him, and he felt all of his senses finally go on high alert to find her. The world opened up with new smells and sounds, and he thought he could smell the chill breeze drifting through the forest a good thirty feet away from their location. Her blood scent was overwhelming, but there were subtle traces of her all over the place, he realized. She was here.

“Scott, watch out!” Kira shouted, and he turned, remembering suddenly that he was fighting someone, that there was a battle going on. And then he saw the man’s face contort and harden, his hair grow, his eyes change color. And Scott felt his heart sink, felt his blood run cold. This man, he hadn’t even wolfed out fully. Scott didn’t even think about it when they were fighting, but now that it was happening Scott understood that this man had been holding back and still nearly defeating them. Scott backed up quickly and tried to locate the other members of his pack, the girls who had come with him.

From behind and to the left he heard Malia shout Peter’s name and Scott glanced back, still keeping most of his attention on the alpha in front of him. The alpha hadn’t moved an inch, but Scott knew as soon as someone charged him again or as soon as he had healed enough, he could be back in their face trying to kill them. “Peter!” Malia shouted again. “Come over here. Help us!”

There was brief silence and finally Scott backed into Kira and Malia. “I’m sorry!” Peter called out to them. “I seem to be a little cuffed at the moment.” Scott could hear the clink of chain links hitting up against each other, so Peter must have lifted up his hands to show up just how _incapacitated_ he was.

Scott could feel Malia’s glare even though she directed it at Peter, and he could smell her absolute hatred. “You said it yourself,” she snarled. “You can break those at any point, you bastard. Come and help us!”

But Peter didn’t move, and Scott knew he wasn’t going to move, knew he wasn’t going to help. There was no benefit for Peter to help them. He didn’t care whether they lived or died, not really. And without Derek here to force him or Lydia to interest him, they had nothing. Especially if he wouldn’t even respond to Malia’s call for help. Scott and Kira and Stiles had even less sway with Peter than she did.

“Do we have a plan?” Kira whispered from his right.

Scott sighed. “Just try to get out in one piece,” Scott said back. “She’s here—Lydia is here—but we need to beat this guy before I can find her. I don’t want to bring her out into the open only to have him kill her. Or kill us.”

“Are you sure she’s alive?” Malia asked quietly, looking over the clearing to where Stiles was sitting. “That thing is soaked with her blood. And Derek’s blood. Is he alive, too?”

“I know,” Scott said. “It’s her blood, but she’s alive. I heard her call out my name and I can feel it. And Derek… he’s alive too. I know he is.”

Scott turned toward Malia to try and reassure her, to tell her (and himself) that they would make it out of this okay. But before he said a word, he felt claws make a shallow arc into his chest and he was thrown backward into Kira. The tip of her sword dug into his foot and he grimaced, but he still did everything in his power to keep himself from landing on her. He flipped in midair and landed on his stomach next to Kira, glancing over her to make sure that she wasn’t more hurt than she had been a few moments ago, and then he used his elbows and knees to lift off the ground. Scott’s blood mixed with the dirt beneath him.

Malia grunted and Scott heard the sickening crunch of bone before she let out a shriek of pain. He spun and saw the man release her fist from his open palm, and Malia turned away from him, cradling her twisted fingers. But he didn’t let her get far; in a flash, he kicked her gut to make her double over and then scraped his claws from her stomach to her shoulder. Scott charged at him, hoping to distract him enough that Malia could limp away to where Kira was and recover, but he wasn’t fast enough to surprise their opponent. The guy backhanded Scott painfully hard and surprisingly quickly, and then turned his attention fully to the younger alpha. “Even your beta gave me more trouble than you are,” he said. “At least that one could transform into a wolf.”

Scott rubbed his jaw and licked his lips, tasting blood from where it had split from the impact of the hit. Malia had successfully made it back to Kira, and they were working to straighten out her fingers so they could heal properly. “You must be Scott,” the man said darkly and took a few steps toward him. “Your little banshee used to shout your name in her sleep. I think she thought you were goin’ to save her.” He laughed. “How pathetic.” Scott’s arm shot up quickly to block a blow, and then he slammed his knee into the man’s thigh, hoping to injure him. Hoping to do some damage. But nothing happened. It only seemed to irritate him further, to really piss him off.

He started to reach for Scott with claws extended, and Scott summoned all of the strength he could to shove the guy as far away from him as possible. It was enough, Scott saw, to knock their opponent at least five feet away from Kira, Malia, and himself, and he sighed in brief relief. The man was on his back for the moment, and while he was pushing himself up, gave Scott the chance to assess his wounds. He wasn’t going to be able to go on fighting like this, and without Peter’s help, he didn’t think their pack was going to last much longer. He and Malia were pretty badly injured, and Kira wasn’t going to last against his speed and overall strength. If Stiles weren’t injured and completely weaponless, Scott might have thought he could jump in the fray, but when he looked over at his friend, he could see that Stiles was struggling more now to keep himself from profusely bleeding. Stiles didn’t have their healing factor. He was going to need to see a doctor, and soon.

Scott looked up, and swallowed hard.  The man had picked up his discarded shotgun, and was aiming it right at Scott’s head, and he wasn’t far enough away that he would miss. Kira and Malia were too busy with their own injuries at the moment to try and knock it out of the man’s hands, and he knew that if that bullet hit, he would nearly be dead. Before it even registered in his mind what was going on, Scott heard a gunshot. The smell of gunpowder filled the air and Scott’s eyes widened, and it felt like time slowed down for a few moments.

And then the man stumbled backward, clutching his stomach.

“You okay, Scott?” Mr. Argent asked, and Scott turned around. Relief flooded his system. Chris was standing with Isaac, Braeden, and Ethan, and they were looking more than a little angry. Scott looked over at his friends, letting Argent follow the trail of his eyes to his injured pack, and then shook his head as Braeden fired another shot into the man behind him. The reinforcements advanced quickly, overtaking Scott and passing him in order to get to their opponent, and Mr. Argent knelt down as Isaac and Ethan raced forward and Braeden loaded what looked like special ammo into her gun.

Chris looked Scott over for a few seconds, obviously assessing the damage that the alpha had done to their pack, and formulating some type of plan to deal with him so Isaac and Ethan didn’t end up the same way. “How did you know?” Scott asked quietly. “To come here, I mean.”

“Kira sent a text to Ethan and then called his phone so Danny could trace it,” Mr. Argent said. “She must have left it in the car, because she’s been calling him for the past 45 minutes so Danny could direct us. We were in Portland already, looking for Lydia.”

Scott didn’t even realize that she had done that, that she had called for reinforcements. It must have happened when Stiles was asleep and Peter was raging on and on at Scott about what a mistake he was making, taking them all into danger. Didn’t he know they were all going to be slaughtered? Didn’t he know how much Peter was going to enjoy that? Malia and Scott had tried to ignore him, and, like usual, Peter ignored Kira, so she must have done it then, when they were otherwise occupied. Taking advantage of their lack of attention: a true trickster. But he was glad she did, because it seemed like Ethan, Isaac, and Braeden were doing a better job taking this guy down than he, Kira, and Malia were. It had something to do, he thought, with the bullets Braeden was using; he could smell wolfsbane in the air. “Have you found Lydia?” Chris asked. “Is she…?”

Scott shook his head. Chris frowned and clenched his fist tightly. He expected the worst, and Scott knew that if he hadn’t heard her call out his name, he too would have thought she was dead. “She’s alive, but we haven’t found her yet. I heard her, though, so she has to be close. I just need a second to look for her.”

Christ nodded, and then looked up at the fight. “Well, we can take care of things up here. Go find Lydia, and then we will take her and Stiles to a hospital.” He gripped Scott’s shoulder and looked into his eyes before pushing away to go help with the alpha. Scott laid on the ground for a few seconds, and then took a deep breath, trying to relax so he could focus on the beats of every heart in the vicinity.

He heard the heartbeats of Stiles and Kira first, and then took in the elevated beats per minute of Malia. She was in pain, and he could smell her pain, but he ignored it for now. She would heal as long as she had the time. His ears picked up Ethan and Isaac’s unique beats as they ran circles around the alpha, creating distractions that Braeden and Chris used to blow holes into him. Scott took another deep breath and listened, and then he caught it. From underground, two faint heartbeats that he knew like he knew his own echoed up toward him. Lydia and Derek were there. They were underground, somehow, but they were both alive.

Scott stood up and looked around, trying figure out where, exactly, they were. His ribs burned with the effort of healing, and the small cuts that weren’t bad enough to need to heal quickly stung from dirt and chill air. But he ignored them, and searched, looking for any sign of a basement or anything like it. He ran toward the house, and then finally caught sight of two wooden doors barely peeking out against the roots of the huge tree. He knew, as soon as he looked at the cellar, that Lydia was down there. He didn’t know if it was her scent subtlely wafting from it or her heart beat echoing, but he knew that she was there. And he shouted her name without realizing it and ran toward it.

He threw the doors open and sunlight streamed in. It took him a few seconds to adjust to the weak light in the cellar, but then he saw her, and his entire body filled with a sense of completeness and his nerves surged with power. His pack was complete. She was alive, and so was Derek, and she was looking at him, and Lydia was there. He would be able to bring her home. Another one of his friends wasn’t going to die today.

“Lydia,” he breathed.

Blood fell from his lips and spilled out onto his chin.

Everything went black.

* * *

“SCOTT!”

His name echoed throughout the cellar and Lydia used the last of her strength to stand up and run the length of the stairs. Her wail, she noticed vaguely, woke Derek up from his forced slumber, but she didn’t pause to even look at him. She _couldn’t_. He must have called her name because she heard it echo throughout the chamber, and she wondered if he knew exactly what she was going to do. Her eyes were stuck on Scott, and she could only watch as blood dripped down his chin and the light left his eyes. She could only watched as Scott fell backward, as Peter pulled his claws out from her alpha’s neck with maniacal laughter. As she ran, the white dress billowed around her, creating shadows in the light but somehow not hampering her movements, not keeping her from making it up the stairs. Lydia’s legs pumped up the stairs as fast as she could, which certainly wasn’t fast enough, and she barely had enough time to catch his body with her good arm before it hit the ground. Lydia cradled his head in her lap, letting it rest in the waves of thick fabric, and knotted the fingers of her uninjured hand into his hair, feeling a wave of tears well up inside of her. _Scott._

She had told him not to come. She had told him to stay behind, to just leave her alone, to let her die. He hadn’t listened. He had come for her anyway, even though he knew he was in danger and going to die. Even though he knew that finding her meant that he wouldn’t be alive anymore. Why didn’t he listen? Why did he always feel the need to be a hero and come save her? Why did her friends always feel this way?

Lydia laid her injured hand, still bleeding, over the wound on his neck for a few seconds and then pulled it away. She didn’t quite understand why she felt drawn to do that, but she knew that it must have mixed their blood and she felt bad about that, because if Scott was going to live then he wouldn’t want her infected blood running through his veins anymore than she did. She pulled her hand away quickly and looked at her fingers, bile rising in her throat at how warm his blood still was. His heart had stopped beating, she guessed, because his veins were no longer blindly squirting blood into the open air, and Lydia felt the same sense of dread in her stomach that had accompanied Allison’s dead, the same feeling of her heart shattering into a thousand and one pieces. But the voices in her head were saying her name over and over again, and not his, and she had another flash of him standing at the foot of the stairs with that smile on his face and claws through his throat and she thought about how often she had seen that exact same image in her mind. It couldn’t be a coincidence, she thought. There was no way that she would have seen this happen unless… unless he could fix it.

Kira fell to her knees next to then, and as she touched his face, Lydia felt desperation rise up in her. Kira lifted Scott’s heat from Lydia’s lap into her own and Lydia let her, choosing instead to take Scott’s hands into her own. She set the comb that she had kept on Scott’s chest, and told Kira to leave it there, told her that it would be important. But Kira wasn’t listening, wasn’t doing anything other than sitting and staring at Scott with tears in her eyes, touching his hair over and over again. Lydia thought about how hard it was for Scott to lose Allison, and then she realized that Kira might be going through something similar, and Lydia wasn’t going to let that happen. “Keep his heart beating,” she said to Kira, her voice sounding more calm than she felt.

“What?” Kira asked, her voice breaking in the middle of the word. Kira’s lip quivered and she could barely tear her gaze away from Scott.

Green eyes met brown, and Lydia grabbed one of Kira’s hands and placed it over Scott’s stopped heart. “Keep. It. Beating,” she said, slowly. “I can fix this if you just keep his heart beating. He needs his heart beating for his healing to kick in, for the wound to close on his throat. If you can do it, I can bring him back.” Kira looked at her and nodded. She didn’t question anything, didn’t ask what Lydia was going to do, and Lydia knew that really, in her heart, Kira would choose Scott over Lydia. Lydia wanted to laugh, to reassure her that it was okay: _Lydia_ would choose Scott over herself, too. But she didn’t say anything, instead concentrating on what was happening and out of the corner of her eye, Lydia saw Braeden run down the steps of the cellar to get Derek.

 _Good_ , she thought. _At least he will be safe_. Kira pressed a palm over Scott’s heart and shocked him, and Lydia took a deep breath before she gripped his hand and let herself give in to the voices around her. The voices that were chanting her name like the beat of a heart, over and over and over again. She pressed all of her life into him, and her eyes drifted shut. She felt her back meet the ground and then there was nothing, for a few moments, just the roar of the world around her and the taste of death on the tip of her tongue.

The room she found herself in was white and tiled, lit by industrial overhead lights that reflected blindingly bright off of the surfaces of the room. She opened her eyes wider, and then took a deep breath before pushing herself off of the ground. Her arms weren’t screaming in pain anymore, and her legs were just as strong as they had been months ago instead of today, and though she still wore the white dress for her ceremony, there was nothing similar about Lydia’s body. In her mind, in this world between worlds, she let herself be healthy. Slowly Lydia stood up, and she looked around. Lydia had been somewhere like this before with Scott, she realized. When they had gone looking for Stiles to save him from the nogitsune, they had wound up in a room very similar to this. The only difference was that, instead of a large stump in the middle, the huge yew tree dominated the space of the room.

Off to one side, not too far from where she currently stood, Lydia was able to make out Scott standing with someone else, talking easily. She frowned, straining her eyes to catch a glimpse of the other person, wondering if the person that Scott had chosen to meet him in death was who she thought it was. If it was the same person she would have wanted to see when she first succumbed to death as well.

The person looked around Scott’s shoulder and broke into a wide, heart stopping smile. Lydia let out a shaky breath and smiled back, tears rolling down her cheeks at the sight of her best friend. It felt like it had been so long since she had seen those dimples and that hair, since she had looked into those eyes and felt someone who cared looking back out at her. “I was waiting for you,” Allison said brightly, and she grabbed Scott’s hand, pulling him over to where Lydia stood. She noticed that he looked like he had before he died, with wounds all over his body and a gaping hole in this throat, and Lydia figured that he didn’t have the same control she did when it came to her mind. Or maybe, as a banshee, she was afforded some degree of dignity in the room between life and death that Scott wasn’t.

“Lydia, what are you doing here?” Scott asked gravely, his eyebrows knit into a worried confusion that reminded her of a puppy.

She shrugged and looked back over at Allison, still so happy to see her. “I came to get you back,” Lydia told him simply.

“How are you here?”

Lydia paused, and then glanced over to Allison. Allison nodded, affirming something, and Lydia could feel Scott looking between the two of them. He must be so confused right now, she thought; he hasn’t had the experience with dead people, with spirits and their world, not like she had. He just didn’t understand. “For one, I’m a banshee,” she said, “and also, it’s Samhain. The time when the barrier between life and death is a little bit weaker. Samhain is about rebirth and the cycle of life, and I think, right now, it’s easier for me to bring you back. To put you back in your body, you see? You sacrificed yourself for me, and now I can bring you back.” She smiled, looking deep into his eyes. She thought about the way that she had channeled her life force into him, had mixed his blood with her own, had laid the comb over his heart. All of that had helped her do this. And she was so close to death anyway, that it was nothing to slip in to the black slumber of oblivion. It was easy to leave the world behind. To leave them all behind to save Scott and make sure that her friends could be happy.

He shook his head, and then looked from her to Allison. They were both having a hard time turning away from her, and Lydia knew why she was the one that was waiting for them. Out of all the people they had lost, all of the people dear to them that had disappeared from their lives, Allison was the one that went too soon and left them with scars across their souls. She had made a mark on both of them, one that was big enough that it would be with them forever. Scott’s first love. Lydia’s best friend. They wanted to see her more than anyone else they had lost.

She was watching them both, as well, her eyes drifting from Lydia to Scott and back again. Lydia was dying to hear her voice again, but Allison didn’t say anything. Lydia wondered if, maybe, she too was waiting to see how all of this turned out. To see who would be coming with her.

“You need to go back, Scott,” Lydia said.

Scott refocused his attention on Lydia. “I came to save you,” he said. “I came to get you back. I can’t just let you die, Lydia.”

Lydia took a step toward him and touched his hand lightly. She smiled without showing her teeth, letting her hand drop back to her side. “I know. I know, and thank you for coming for me,” she said. “You’ve done so much for me and I don’t know if there is any way I can thank you. But you need to go back, okay? They need you. Kira and Liam and Malia and Derek and S…” Her voice caught in her throat momentarily as his name tried to pass her lips. She wouldn’t see him again. He hadn’t been there, with Scott, when Scott opened the door and she had been so focused to saving her alpha that she didn’t even look for him. It was for the best, though. If she had seen Stiles, she might have lost her resolve. “Your pack needs you and your parents need you and the world needs you, Scott. I can’t let you sacrifice yourself for me.”

He just shook his head. She had expected resistance from him, but not sadness. Not this insistence in his eyes that she was just as valuable to him as he was to her. “What about your parents? And your friends?”

Lydia shrugged. She had made peace with her decision many nights ago, when she had realized that, if it came down to her or someone else, the other person would win out. She thought about her mother’s smile and the light in her sister’s eyes, and her heart sank to her stomach, but they would find them again. Her father would find his laugh and her sister would be happy and her friends… they would go on without her, too. Scott and Kira would be together, and Liam and Malia would be fine, and Derek could be with Braeden and maybe they would name their daughter after her. Stiles would be… she thought about his eyes and his mouth and his heart, and remembered him telling her that death doesn’t happen to her but to everyone around her, and she pushed that thought out of her mind. She couldn’t think about that right now, couldn’t do anything other than sadly hope that if she was dead he wouldn’t care too much.“I’m ready, Scott. To face whatever is next. I made a decision to save you. Now, _please_ , let me.”

Scott reached out and grabbed Lydia’s shoulder, and they both felt a pulse rip through him. Her eyes widened for a second, afraid that he was going to be the one going with Allison, that she could fail, but his breath hitched and as soon as he gripped the fabric above his heart, she understood. In the real world, his heart was starting to beat. Kira was trying to bring him back, just like Lydia told her to, and now it was up to Lydia to send Scott’s soul back to his body. The wounds on his arms and legs and throat started to close up, and Scott shook his head, saying over and over again that it wasn’t right for him to go and leave her.

She took his hand into her own, and then pulled him toward her, wrapping her arms around his body. She felt Scott reciprocate, and she leaned her forehead onto his shoulder. “You’re the best, Scott McCall,” Lydia said. “I am so glad you are my alpha. Remember that, okay? No matter what you feel when you wake up, just remember that you are amazing and I am so glad I got to know you.” Another pulse echoed through him, and Lydia felt the dread from his death start to ease and disappear. Scott pulled her closer to him, and for a moment they were both ignoring Allison. The top of her head where Scott was leaning his cheek started to feel wet, and Lydia started crying, too, overcome with grief and happiness and pride. “You are such a good person, Scott. You are so good and you’ve overcome so much to be the person you are today and… and… you’re a hero.”

He laughed and she smiled into him, pulling him even more tightly. She wondered if he was trying to crush her into him, to pull her so close that the life flowing through him went to her as well and they would both wake up on the same side of life in a few minutes. But Scott didn’t have that power, and Lydia barely had the strength to send his soul back, to bring him back to life. Her final act of heroism. The one really good thing she would do in her life. The pulses from his heart were much stronger now, and Lydia felt her connection to the world of the living fading away. The tips of her fingers were numb and there was a desperate cold starting in her stomach, moving through her limbs at a glacial pace.  

“So are you, Lydia Martin. You’re a hero. And you are such a good person,” he said. He shook with sobs and she shook with him, letting his warmth stall her passing for a little bit. He was so warm, she thought, so full of life. So ready to be back with them. “I am so glad to call you one of my best friends.”

They stayed wrapped up in each other for a few moments more, and then Lydia backed away to look him in the eye. She could feel his presence getting weaker here, and knew that it was only a matter of time before his soul went back to his body. “Make sure they’re happy,” she said. “Make sure he is happy. And… and tell him I love him.”

Scott nodded, opened his mouth, whispered four words, and then, before her breath could hitch, he was gone.

Lydia closed her eyes and cried, silently, for a few moments. Allison let her, not saying a word, only offering her shoulder in place of Scott’s. Lydia took it and was amazed at how normal it felt to be here with her, holding on to her like this. And she wondered if this was real or if this Allison was just a figment of her and Scott’s collective imagination, if this was just who they both wanted to see more than anyone else and the yew tree granted them that wish before they were wiped into oblivion. The yew tree, the marker of death and rebirth, the veil between life and death. She wouldn’t doubt that it had the power flowing within it to grant them both one final wish before they passed.

“That was a real Harry Potter move there,” Allison said warmly. “Sacrificing yourself for the good of the world.”

The cold had finally worked its way through most of her body. It was only a matter of time before she was gone, before her body finally gave up on her soul and she was able to follow Allison into the door that had appeared in the room. Lydia backed up and looked at her, a grin on her face. “I think it’s a little closer to Sydney Carton, don’t you? Sacrificing myself for a friend so everyone else can be happy? ‘It is a far, far better thing that I do, than I have ever done.’”

“‘It is a far, far better rest that I go to, than I have ever known,’” Allison finished for her. Allison glanced Lydia over, and then touched the fabric of the white dress over Lydia’s heart. She felt it give a painful thump, and all of her loved ones ran through her mind before she settled on an image of Stiles. Allison pulled her hand away, cocked her head, and then shrugged. “If you think so. Still, it’s good to see you again.”

Lydia started walking toward the door, but Allison caught her hand and pulled her back. Not yet, she seemed to say. “Let’s wait for a little bit before we go in there, okay?” Lydia just nodded.

Allison pulled her into a hug, and Lydia closed her eyes, finally feeling herself drift into that far, far better rest.

* * *

Scott’s eyes shot open and, without even looking at Lydia’s limp body, he started crying.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Sorry.
> 
> For the, um, you know. Lydia dying part. 
> 
> And also for the terribly written fight scene I mean come on, how often can someone roll off of someone else before we get that their asses are getting beat, huh? Huh? Anyway, I hope you liked it. Please leave a comment with reactions, critiques, theories, anything. 
> 
> The next chapter is being written. This one was 16,000 words strong so hopefully it will sustain you for a little bit, but luckily I have the next few days off so hopefully I'll be able to get some writing done and it wouldn't leave you with this miserable cliff hanger forever. Is this a cliff hanger? Does it count as cliff hanging if we know she is dead? 
> 
> Thanks guys, and happy holidays!!


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